Michael Smith
Pro Bio, Oct 2018 (PDF format, 283 KB)

See: Michael's recollections below about his musical roots and earliest influences.

Michael Smith, the lyricist, composer and performer of renown, was a voracious reader and never at a loss for material. As early as age 16, when he set the words that appeared on the grave of Robert Louis Stevenson, Michael was adapting and setting literature, children’s stories, and poetry to music.

Michael’s songs set poems by F. Garcia Lorca (Five in the Afternoon), Wallace Stevens (Blue Guitar), Chilean poets Gabriela Mistral (Swallow) and Pablo Neruda, as well as Irish poetry (Songs of the Kerry Madwoman), set in a chamber opera, with poems by Patricia Monaghan, and Chinese Tang Dynasty poets (Painted Horse).
Passages from Robert Cole’s “The Spiritual Lives of Children” were transformed in We Become Birds. The words of essayist Ann Carson appear in a surprising way in Michael’s song Seurat. Michael’s original work was featured at the Poetry Foundation: And the Poet Sang, (2013) with Jamie O’Reilly and Peter Swenson, and in Brecht’s Letters with Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble members (2014). His most recent recording is of songs inspired by Melville’s Moby Dick.

Michael Peter Smith was featured among a list of luminaries in Paul Zollo's 2016 book: More Songwriters on Songwriting (DaCapo Press).
In 2018, he released Songwriting, a CD recording that is part master class, part memoir. Recorded at WFMT Studio in Chicago. Songwriting was featured on the music program Sweet Folk Chicago. (An excerpt can be heard at Jamie's site.)

Michael's rich life included touring in North America for over five decades. His songs have been recorded by artists the world over. His song The Dutchman is considered a classic in the folk lexicon.

This self-taught musician was also an award-winning composer. As a beloved master in the folk music scene, Michael always delivered the goods. Time and again, audiences reported an evening with him was an unforgettable appearance. As a soloist, Michael was a program highlight at musical venues and and at folk festivals from Kerrville, Texas to Shawano, WI and Toronto, CA. Michael's East Coast tours, as both a solo artist, and in performance with Anne Hills, have brought him to folk venues and concert halls from Princeton, NJ to Cambridge, MA.

MOST RECENT PROJECT

Michael Smith's Moby Dick

Michael regularly contributed songs and original scores to the finest theaters in United States and internationally. An avid reader, Smith's work often sets words of the finest poets and authors: Lorca, Steinbeck, Wilde, Mistral, Brecht, Jackson, Stevenson, among the many. His most recent project Michael P. Smith's Fifteen Songs from Moby Dick features original songs inspired by the seminal American classic, setting the texts from Herman Melville's novel as sea shanties, story-songs, ballads and anthems. Strong, swarthy, infectious, and infused with Smith’s signature poignant melodies, the songs of Moby Dick are reminiscent of 19th century balladry, and capture the tantalizing power of seafaring life. The 15 original compositions are performed with stirring vocals and Michael’s fine guitar playing. As strong a collection as any in the 21st century Americana folk music lexicon, Moby Dick may be some of Michael’s best work!

SONGWRITER/COMPOSER/COLLABORATOR

Michael was engaged by, and for, estimable cultural institutions. A sampling of Illinois host-venues alone includes Newberry, Evanston, Lisle, Oak Park and Alton Libraries, The Poetry Foundation, The Museum of Contemporary Art, DePaul Humanities Center, Logan Center for the Arts, Lookingglass Theater, Victory Gardens Theater, Old Town School of Folk Music, Field Museum, Woodstock Opera House, Irish American Heritage Center, Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall, Chicago History Museum, and Northwestern University Thorne Auditorium.

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

Michael's extensive catalog of original compositions includes critically acclaimed theatrical scores, recordings, and songs for award-winning theatrical productions.

Michael's songs have been featured in four Chicago Humanities Festivals.

COLLABORATIONS

In recent years, Michael worked extensively with celebrated puppeteer/producer Blair Thomas, including in a touring production of The Brotherhood of the Monastic Order of Ancient Mariners Purges the Ills of Society Through a Reading of the Tales of Moby-Dick, performed at the The Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes in Charleville, France. A workshop production was also mounted at Virginia Tech University, and had a limited run at the prestigious Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Another Thomas collaboration is their piece based on Oscar Wilde's The Selfish Giant, a highlight in the Chicago International Puppet Festival, and touring for the Children’s Theatre Production. Michael contributed music to Edward Gorey's The Vinegar Works for Loyola University Museum of Art. Blair and Michael collaborated on The Snow Queen for Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater, with Tony/Academy Award-winning director Frank Galati.

ANNE HILLS

The Heart Songs of Opal Whiteley was written with longtime collaborator Anne Hills. Anne has performed the music as a multimedia theater piece, and solo concert. These lifelong friends toured together and collaborated on many projects.

FOLK CABARETS

Michael’s 20 year collaboration with Chicago vocalist, and producer Jamie O'Reilly resulted in a formidable series of folk-cabarets: Pasiones: Songs Of The Spanish Civil War (1997), directed by Peter Glazer, was written in collaboration with veterans of the legendary Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The stirring cabaret was seen at Chicago's Theater on the Lake, and toured to New York City, San Francisco, Oakland, Allentown, PA and more. The recording in 6 languages is sold around the world.
Michael composed music for the box office hit Hello Dali: From the Sublime to the Surreal (2000). Their production received two After Dark Awards for Best New Work and Best Ensemble for Victory Gardens Theater. Other original productions and recordings with Jamie O’Reilly include The Gift of the Magi (2003) for Judith Svalander Dance Theatre at the Woodstock Opera House, the chamber opera Songs of the Kerry Madwoman (2006) for the DePaul Humanities Center, and the Chicago Humanities Festival.

In a more recent collaboration, Songs of a Catholic Childhood, they reflected on life in parochial school. The concert featured personal stories and musical selections from the “soundtrack” that accompanied their formative years: Michael’s in the working class Irish/Italian neighborhoods of post-WWII in New Jersey – Jamie’s as one of 14 kids, in the post-Vatican II-Baby Boom era, outside Chicago.

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MUSICAL ROOTS (Michael's recollections):

I was born in Newark New Jersey in 1941. The first music I remember hearing was The Nutcracker Suite, a recording by Spike Jones. It scared me to death. I still can't see the words Mouse King in print without getting chills. I also was quite frightened by the melody of "Dardanella", which sounded diabolical to me, along with the Irish tune "A Stack Of Barley", a melody that seemed as if it would never stop. When I read about cultures where music is forbidden or linked to the devil I can sympathize with those primitive cats for about thirty seconds, but finally my feeling is that if a three-year-old can get over it you can too.

When I was five my Aunt Mamie taught me to sing for company: "The Boston Burglar", "Paddy McGinty's Goat" and "Who Put The Overalls In Mrs. Murphy's Chowder".

When I was ten my favorite recording artists were Roy Rogers, Phil Harris, Frankie Laine, Jerry Lewis, and Les Paul and Mary Ford. My favorite songwriter was Cole Porter. I wanted to live in the world of "Begin The Beguine" and "Night And Day".

When I was fourteen I discovered Caterina Valente, with whom I shall be forever in love. I bought all her singles, with the Werner Muller Orchestra, on Decca. Fifty years later I still listen to her singing "The Breeze And I", over and over and over. It's a wonderful, eternal recording. I think she was twenty or so when she did it. I was crazy about Elvis Presley for a minute. His first record was great.

When I heard Johnny Ace singing "Pledging My Love", I got a glimpse of the adult world and also how sexy vibes could sound on a recording. There was a story that Johnny Ace died in a game of Russian Roulette, which was fine with me, very adult. I loved "Earth Angel" by The Penguins and "In The Still Of The Night" by The Five Satins (not Cole Porter's) and "Teardrops" by Lee Andrews and the Hearts, and to this day my favorite music is doowop. I sang bass with an a capella doowop group in high school (Passaic Valley Regional, in Little Falls, New Jersey). At that time I thought singing bass meant you sang the melody, only an octave down. What did I know? We wore red sweaters with big white T's on them, for The Teenclefs, and we had dance moves. We cut a record in the back of Sal's Barber Shop in Great Notch, watching the wax curl up from the disc as we sang. We might have done the dance moves while we recorded. It was a heavenly time.

When I was fifteen Harry Belafonte came along with his great calypso songs and his great presence and that's when I decided to learn to play the guitar, and the first song I wrote was a calypso setting of the Robert Louis Stevenson poem called "Requiem". The Kingston Trio followed shortly and I loved so many of their songs too, plus they played guitars the way I wanted to, great rhythms and a chordal sense that never got old. I still listen to the Kingston Trio too.

For a long time I thought I was a folksinger, because I liked to sing folk songs.

When I was twenty-three or so I realized that I was probably a songwriter, though for a few years I confined my writing to what I thought of as satiric tunes, in the style of Tom Lehrer, Phil Ochs and the Mitchell Trio. I was living then in Coconut Grove, Florida, and worked six nights a week for three years at a coffeehouse, The Flick, where my employer wanted funny.

It took me quite a while but I finally picked up on The Beatles around Sergeant Pepper and now I will never be free. Thank God for The White Album.

My wife Barbara and I live in Chicago and I am fortunate to be able to explore recording at home, to travel and do concerts, to be in plays and to write songs, some of which I can hardly believe are mine. Nothing ever as scary as The Nutcracker Suite, though.

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