Smith, Hale, 1972 - 1987

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on June 29, 1925. He learned piano at an early age and played mellophone in the high school band. As a teenager, he played jazz piano in local nightclubs and he was sixteen, he met Duke Ellington, who commented on his compositions. From his early teens, he played jazz piano in the nightclubs of Cleveland, his hometown, but he went on to study classical composition and achieve a national reputation for an eclectic oeuvre and his synthesis of jazz and 12-tone technique.

In the early 1940s he was drafted and worked for the U.S. Army as an arranger for shows at camps in Georgia and Florida. After the Army he studied classical music and composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music and received bachelor's and master's degrees. His composition Four Songs won the first student composer award given by BMI. During the late 1950s he moved to New York City and was employed as an editor at publishing companies. He worked as a jazz pianist and arranger with Eric Dolphy, Dizzy Gillespie, Ahmad Jamal, Melba Liston, Oliver Nelson, and Randy Weston and wrote incidental music for television, radio, and theater. With Chico Hamilton he wrote music for the movie Mr. Ricco (1975).

His compositions include The Valley Wind (1952), In Memoriam, Beryl Rubinstein (1953), Sonata for Cello and Piano (1955), Contours for Orchestra (1961), Faces of Jazz (1965), Evocation (1966), Ritual and Incantation (1974), Innerflexions (1977), Toussaint L'Ouverture (1979), Solemn Music (1979), Three Patterson Lyrics (1985), and Dialogues and Commentaries (1991). He wrote music for band, choir, orchestra, jazz groups, chamber ensembles, duos, and solo performance.

Smith was a teacher at C.W. Post campus of Long Island University in Brookville and the University of Connecticut in Storrs, retiring in 1984.

He died at the age of 84 on November 24, 2009.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale_Smith / https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/arts/music/28smith.html