Department of Music

• Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
• Old Cabell Hall
• 8:00pm
• Free

Ed Smith's music career as a jazz vibraphonist and percussionist spans more than three decades. He has performed with distinguished artists such as John Cage, Phil Wilson, Louie Bellson, Johnny Mathis, Steve Houghton, Greg Bissonette, Ed Soph, Glen Velez, Trichy Sankaran, Nyoman Wenten, Hands On’Semble and many others.

In 1992 Ed helped form the internationally recognized world percussion group, D'Drum, which won an award for runner-up Best Percussion Ensemble in Drum Magazine's 2002 Readers Poll. The group recorded the soundtrack for the National Geographic Film Lions of Darkness and performed in Hong Kong as part of the Chinese modern presentation of Mozart's The Magic Flute. A PBS short film about the group and their world travels won an Emmy in 1999. Their first CD Village Besides Time is critically acclaimed, and their second CD released in the spring of 2006 Within You Without You features Ed’s arrangements and lyrical vibes on the title song. D’Drum has been a featured concert act at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC). Currently the group is collaborating with Stewart Copeland (drummer/founder of The Police) on a world music concerto commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

In his search to expand his voice on solo vibraphone, Ed began traveling to Bali, Indonesia in 1995 to study the music of wayang kulit (shadow puppet play) on gender wayang. The unusual contrapuntal techniques used on this bronze metallophone have been a great inspiration to his solo vibe compositions and improvisations. While in Bali in 1998, Ed was awarded the high honor of performing on the gender wayang with his teacher, Ketut Madri, in a temple celebration – a feat many Balinese would not attempt. Since 2002 Ed has also been studying the repertoire of the large Balinese gamelan, gong kebyar. Kebyar translates as “the process of flowering” and one can hear the cross-pollination of this world music in Ed’s vibraphone techniques.

Another profound source of inspiration has been his twenty years of playing solo vibe improvisations for Martha Graham dance classes at the Meadows School of The Arts at SMU. The act of extemporizing to the motion of bodies flowing though space has given Ed’s sound a unique malleable quality. As an independent soloist, he has displayed this expression countless times in performances at the Dallas Museum of Art. He has also performed solo internationally in China and Mexico. Ed has become a new artist for Malletech’s new “Love” Vibe.

Ed composes and performs with the cross-cultural jazz-fusion group, Brahmah, including world-renowned musicians Poovalur Sriji on mridangam, Jamal Mohamed on doumbek and Fred Hamilton on guitar. Their first CD Brahmahwas released in 2005.

Ed is on the percussion faculty at the University of North Texas, teaching jazz vibraphone and Balinese gamelan.  He also teaches at Southern Methodist University and Cedar Valley College, and is a member of the summer faculty of Marimba Madness and Liberty Global Percussion Camp.

Members of the ensemble are Monica Anderson, Elliott Burris, Kalyn Carson, Laura Chesser, Ben Cooper, Derek Cousins, Samuel Cushman, Bena Dam, Matthew Jibilian, Evan Monez, Daniel Pyon, David Rhodenbaugh, Rodell Tolliver and Veronica Tornini.

This concert will feature works by Nathan Daughtrey, Mantle Hood, Christopher Rouse, Ed Smith, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and student transcriptions.
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The Percussion Ensemble is a chamber ensemble that performs literature from classical transcriptions to contemporary music. The ensemble draws upon a large family of pitched and non-pitched percussion instruments and number of players and the amount of equipment varies greatly from piece to piece.