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Radio // Randall Smith
L’oreille voit
La volière (1994), 12m58s [excerpt]
Track 1 from L’oreille voit
CD: empreintes DIGITALes (1994) IMED 9416

Artists // Randall Smith

  • Articles about Randall Smith

    Record reviews are found in the pages for each disc (via the discography tab).

    13 September 2001
    By François Couture in All-Music Guide (USA), September 13, 2001

    Text

    “… Smith approaches the genre with a lack of pomposity and a playfulness that make his works particularly suitable for newcomers to musique concrète…”

    Randall Smith is one of the lesser-known Canadian electroacoustic composers — and it’s a shame. His music surely equals the one of Gilles Gobeil or Robert Normandeau. Fascinated by the cinematographic possibilities of acousmatic art, Smith approaches the genre with a lack of pomposity and a playfulness that make his works particularly suitable for newcomers to musique concrète and its derivatives.

    Smith was born in the industrial city of Windsor (Ontario, Canada). He started his career as a composer through collaborations with dancers and film makers in Toronto. His discovery of the music created at the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM) in Paris prompted a decisive shift and from 1987 to 1995 he created acousmatic music exclusively. His first solo CD L’oreille voit (“The Ear Sees,” the title being by itself a good indication of his artistic goal), released on the prestigious label empreintes DIGITALes, in 1994 eloquently summarizes this period.

    In 1992, Smith began to take violin lessons with Eugene Kash. This would soon lead him to create mixed electroacoustic music (works for instruments and tape). His first (and very impressive) attempts in this direction can be heard on his second album, Sondes (1999), including Convergence, the piece he wrote for virtuoso accordionist Joseph Petric.

    He has won his share of prizes at international competitions and received grants from Canadian governmental councils, but he can hardly be seen as a careerist or an administrator, unlike many other electroacoustic composers. The late 1990s saw Smith becoming interested in Middle-Eastern folkloric music. He studied the tar with Ahmad Ashraf-Abadi.

    blogue@press-448_7 press@448_7
    1 April 1996
    By Rick MacMillan in SOCAN, Words & Music (Canada), April 1, 1996

    Text

    Randall Smith of Toronto has been awarded both the first Jury Prize and the Public Prize in the 1996 International Noroit Acousmatic Music Competition in Arras, France. Each prize is valued at $3,000. Smith’s work Elastic Rebound was picked from a field of 81 entries. Fellow Canadians Ned Bouhalassa and Marc Tremblay were also among the seven finalists.

    blogue@press-212 press@212

    Other texts in

    • Ear Magazine (USA), June 1, 1997
      “Excellent, among the best of the genre”
Randall Smith
Windsor, Ontario, Canada, 1960
Residence: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Composer