Nathan Parker Smith

Where Can You Be? is about balance. Balance between rigidity and openness. Ensemble and soloist. Consonance and dissonance. Uniformity and chaos. My goal in writing this piece is to capture the percussive drive of a brass band but orchestrated for just four strings. Each member of the quartet is given the opportunity to improvise and add their own creative component to the composition — from the small additions of bends, glisses and extended techniques, to entire sections of featured improvisation. There are churning ostinatos in the cello and soaring soloistic lines in the violins throughout. Halfway through the piece, the viola leads a gentle, albeit brief respite from the chaos before the cello roars back for the climatic ending. 

A native of Northern California, Nathan Parker Smith is an active performer and composer currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. His compositions span a variety of instrumentation, genre, and media. Recent projects include music for the short films “Story” and “The Writer” directed by Andrew Ondrejcak, narrated by Tilda Swinton and starring Kyle Abraham. Music for “Outage,” an animation by Jennifer Levonian and Eva Wylie for Locust Projects in Miami. An hour long solo piano composition and performance for theater entitled “Landscape with Figures” in New Orleans. Concert band compositions for the International School of Luxembourg, and an orchestral work played by the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra.

His large ensemble’s debut album, Not Dark Yet (2014 Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records), has been described by Timeout New York as “muscular and bracingly intricate” and as “blockbuster, even bruising, music with little respite on the program” by Richard B. Kamins. The group has been noted for their unapologetically aggressive and engaging style, heavily informed by European heavy metal, 20th century classical composition and progressive rock. “...[a] seriously aggressive large ensemble… music that speaks loudly and carries a big stick, too.” Dave Sumner, Wondering Sound.

Smith has been a guest clinician, composer, and conductor at the Eastman School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, the University of Connecticut, the University of Nevada Reno, and City College New York. He holds a bachelors of music from the University of Miami Frost School of Music and Masters of Music from the Eastman School of Music.