Chris SmithChristopher J. Smith is Assistant Professor of Music History and Literature and director of the Vernacular Music Center at the Texas Tech University School of Music. He holds the Bachelor of Arts (Music, Summa Cum Laude) from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and a Master's in Music (Jazz, Magna Cum Laude) and Ph.D. in Musicology (Magna Cum Laude) from the Indiana University School of Music. He is the 1997 recipient of the John H. Edwards Fellowship, the 1998 recipient of the Walter Kaufmann Musicology Prize from Indiana, and a 2003 recipient of the Alumni Association’s New Faculty Award from Texas Tech. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Indiana University, and University College Cork, in addition to Texas Tech. In 2005 he will also release a solo CD recording of traditional Irish music.
His research interests are in American and African-American Music, 20th Century Music, Irish traditional music and folk culture, other vernacular musics, improvisation, music and politics, performance practice, and historical performance. He is the author of Celtic Backup for All Instrumentalists, "The Celtic Guitar" (in The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar), "Miles Davis and the Semiotics of Improvised Performance" (in Improvisation: In the Course of Performance), and Irish Session Tunes by Ear. He has published articles in College Music Symposium, T.D.R. The Drama Review, R.P.M. (Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music), Early Music America, Contemporary Music Review, Bloomington Voice, Early Music (London), Irish Music, Lubbock Magazine, Historical Performance, Piping Today, The Journal of Music in Ireland and The Tallgrass Journal, reviews in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and chapters on music in The World and Its Peoples for Brown Reference Group and the Encyclopedia of Franco-American Relations for ABC-Clio. He has presented papers at the national meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Sonneck Society for American Music, the American Musicological Society, the International Society for the Study of Popular Music, the Narrative Society, the American Council for Irish Studies, and the LYRICA Society for Text and Music Studies; has chaired sessions at University College Cork, Scoil Samraidh Willie Clancy in County Clare, and the Popular Culture Association; and has presented papers internationally at the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference (Glasgow), the Representing Ireland conference (Newcastle), the International Meetings of the Council for Irish Studies (Liverpool), and the UCCB Storytelling Symposium (Nova Scotia).He has designed and created World Wide Web content for Prentice-Hall’s music history textbook series and for www.banjosessions.com. Current book projects include The Wandering Minstrel (the authorized biography of Irish folklorist, piper, singer, collector, and broadcaster Séamus Ennis), The Wheels of the World: American Music and Radical Politics, and a project exploring the interaction of African-American and Irish-American musical styles before the Civil War. He is also a published poet.
In addition, he records and tours internationally with Altramar medieval music ensemble (7 CDs to date on the Dorian Group label, with concerts throughout North America, Holland, England, Ireland, Germany, and Austria), leads the Irish traditional band Last Night's Fun (with TTU Professor Angela Mariani) and the Juke Band (pre-WWII blues and jazz, with TTU’s Dr Kevin Wass), directs the Texas Tech University Ceili Band, and has lectured or performed at hundreds of colloquia, concerts, workshops, and pub sessions across the Continent and in Europe, and on National Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, and the Fox Network nationwide. He writes liner notes for Dorian Group, Ltd., for Naxos World, and for independent CD releases and serves as columnist for www.irishmusic.com. He was the traditional-music consultant for noted composer Dan Welcher’s Minstrels of the Kells and performed at its TTU premiere, directs the annual Caprock Celtic Christmas at Texas Tech, served on the International Advisory Board for the Naxos World record label and on the boards of Supporters of Fine Arts and Caprock Early Music, as co-Director of the TTU Symposium of World Musics and Southwest Early Music, as informal consultant to the Society for Ethnomusicology and to the Buddy Holly Center educational program, and on the Steering Committee of the Buddy Holly Symposium, and is a founding staff member of ZoukFest, the world's only music camp and festival for players of the Irish bouzouki.
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