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Christopher J. Smith is Associate Professor and Chair of Musicology/Ethnomusicology 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 (with high distinction) 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, a 2003
recipient of the Alumni Association’s New Faculty Award, and in 2005 was both the recipient of the "Professing
Excellence" award and elected to the Teaching Academy at Texas Tech. He has taught at the University of
Massachusetts at Boston and Indiana University and as a guest lecturer at University College Cork, in addition
to Texas Tech, as well as leading roving field-trips for students in the West of Ireland, chairing the
Vernacular Music Center Scholarship Committee, and, beginning in Summer 2007, teaching Celtic music and
culture at TTU’s Junction campus.
His research interests are in American and African-American Music, 20th Century Music, Irish traditional music and other
folk musics and cultures, 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),
"Trusting the Tradition: The Meaning of the Irish Session Workshop" (in Proceedings of the VIIth International
Symposium on Cultural Diversity in Music Education: The Local and the Global), "Gaelic and Continental Musical
Interaction in Early Modern Ireland" (in The Renaissance in Ireland), "Cinematic Constructions of Irish Musical
Identity" (in Popular Culture and Postmodern Ireland), and Irish Session Tunes by Ear.
He has published articles in College Music Symposium,
New Hibernia Review, 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 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, the Film and History Society, the
Southern American Studies Association, 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; originated and chaired the First Annual Texas Tech Fine Arts Colloquium, and has presented
papers internationally at the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference (Glasgow), the Representing Ireland
conference (Newcastle), the Council for Cultural Diversity in Music Education (Brisbane), 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, for the Buddy Holly Center, 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,
Canada, Holland, 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),
directs the Texas Tech University Celtic Ensemble,
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, and in 2005
released a solo CD of Irish traditional music, which was selected for inclusion
on a compilation disc by Global Rhythm magazine’s May 2006 Song Contest (distributed
to over 130,000 readers). His latest disc with Last Night’s Fun is Johnny Faa, a
program of songs and tunes in the Irish tradition. He has written liner notes for
Dorian Group, Ltd., for Naxos World, and for independent CD releases and served
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, formerly served on the International
Advisory Board for the Naxos World record label and currently serves 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. As an instrumentalist, he concretizes on Irish bouzouki, tenor banjo,
button accordion, slide guitar, saz, lute, gittern, Turkish lavta, and percussion.
To contact Christopher Smith, email
christopher.smith@ttu.edu.
Dr Smith directs the TTU Celtic Ensemble
Dr Smith's TTU homepage: http://webpages.acs.ttu.edu/chrissmi/
Dr Smith's commercial homepage: http://coyotebanjo.com
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