Album review: Gary Smart “Blossoms”

Fanfare for Piano and Radio. Blossoms. Four American Painters. Line Drawing. On Three Notes. In Black and White. Three American Poets. The Robot’s Tango. For Toru. Dangerous Machine. Inside Again. Shortening Bread. Christmas Music for Piano and Two Radios.

If I had to choose just one word to describe the pianist and composer Gary Smart, the word I would probably use is, well, smart. Currently a Presidential Professor of Music at the University of North Florida, Smart, who was interviewed by Peter Burwasser for Fanfare last year, really knows his trade. Although this is not apparent from the annotations that accompany the recording, which were written by the composer himself, Smart studied composition with such luminaries as Toru Takemitsu, Elliot Carter, Yannis Xenakis, and Luciano Berio, and among his piano teachers and mentors he counts Vlado Perlmutter, Claude Frank, Jorge Bolet, and jazz hall-of-famer Oscar Peterson. For all his numerous diplomas and pedigrees, however, Smart is a real iconoclast. His protean music is utterly unique and, at least to my ears, it defies categorization. For consideration here is a recording of “unedited abstract improvisations,” as Smart puts it, consisting of twenty-five piano pieces. Although only one of these works exceeds five minutes and most take less than three, they all pack quite a punch.

To cut right to the chase, this is a disc that invites debate and may well divide listeners into two camps. I suspect that it will fascinate contemporary music aficionados and probably irritate the hell out of almost everyone else. I fall in the former camp, and, frankly, the more I listened to this recording the more I enjoyed it. It really is a ton of fun, and the only disappointment is that, since these are improvisations, it is unlikely that this music will reach a wider concert audience. (Perhaps Smart could be persuaded to write at least some of these pieces down?)

The three cycles—Blossoms, Four American Painters, and Three American Poets—deserve to be singled out for their evocative qualities (detractors should check out the luminous, Szymanowskian Frankenthaler), as do the contemplative For Toru (an elegy written for Smart’s mentor Takemitsu), the percussive Shortening Bread, and the last work, Christmas Music. Concerning Christmas Music, in which the piano interacts with and reacts to two radios that blast Christmas music, static, commercials, and sundry news-du-jour, e.g., news concerning United Airlines’ bankruptcy, Smart remarks in his witty and informative annotations: “I have the feeling something very meaningful happens [here] . . . but my explanations are clumsy and I leave further comment to others.” Before even reading Smart’s annotations, I got the exact same feeling listening to his inventive music, but I too cannot quite explain why. But isn’t that the mystery of good music, whether it was written last week or two hundred years ago?

The quality of the recording is very good. Smart plays a spunky instrument, whose bright, piercing, and percussive voice suits his music well. As an added bonus, this instrument has no fear of intimacy—it does not appear bothered in the slightest to have its insides occasionally touched, plucked, scraped, and gently hit. Although he is not exactly a young man, Smart plays with astonishing facility and ebullience. I suspect that he is a very happy person, and that really comes through in his playing.

I highly recommend this recording to readers with an interest in experimental music. More generally, I also recommend it to anyone who can keep an open mind for at least two minutes and eighteen seconds, the duration of the aforementioned Frankenthaler. Radu A. Lelutiu