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Re: RIP William O Smith/Bill Smith

Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-03-19 03:11

Donald,

Smith's folk music recording is especially charming. Some musical friends not particularly interested in jazz or the clarinet have asked me where they can get a copy after listening to some of the takes on that record. Mikko Raasakka, in his exhaustive treatment of multiphonics and other extended techniques (The Clarinet: A Guide to Clarinet Technique in Finnish Music) gives credit to William O Smith for pioneering the development of multiphonics on the clarinet. Mikko says Smith's "Five Pieces for Flute and Clarinet" (1961) was "the earliest work to contain specific detailed" multiphonics. That was even before Peter Maxwell Davis and Alan Hacker got together to use them. Smith heard Servino Gazzelloni play multiphonics on the flute, probably in Berio's "Sequenza I" (1958) and said, why not do that on clarinet too? He was always thinking of the clarinet as a part of the musical tapestry and wanted to weave the instrument into the fabric. His book, "Jazz Clarinet" may be the most original exploration of that topic available.

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