Conductor Jordan Randall Smith received 2nd Place in the 2019 edition of The American Prize in Orchestral Conducting.
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Symphony Number One
…that more than any other skill is the one that I hope to teach students: not how to avoid failure, but how to learn from it and grow stronger because of it. The number one way to be resilient in music is to not simply wait for the proverbial phone to ring. Instead, create your own opportunities, and write yourself into your projects.
A new season of music is upon us! And with a new season, a tall stack of new scores to learn. I have compiled a number of works that will be performed by the various groups I lead. In addition, I’ve added a few all-time favorites and other interesting tracks.
In October 2017, I had the privilege of giving a TED Talk and leading Symphony Number One in a performance at TEDxMidAtlantic 2017 in Washington, DC. My talk was titled Classical Music is Boring. (Turns out, there's more to "boring" than meets the eye!)
This most recent holiday season was a particularly joyful period of celebration. Here is a look at five musical moments from this past November and December:
NEW ALBUM: Symphony Number One has recorded every concert from its founding, releasing the best new music by stunning voices, many of whom are being heard widely for the very first time. Our fourth release, Approaching, features works in three sizes–small, medium, and large–from three of today’s hottest new composers, all lovingly prepared and performed by Symphony Number One in Baltimore.
I think one of the reasons I find this so appealing is that I didn’t initially discover Bruckner through his symphonies. My initial vector was through singing his motets in college. So, I think I never formed my mental Bruckner totem around his orchestrations but rather around his harmonic language, expressed in a capella choral music, as a tool to focus on reverence for The Divine, for The Higher Ideals, and for Our Better Nature. In a word, God.
But there was one person who indefatigably stuck by me at this juncture, at the hour of greatest need. This was the same guy who was the very first to write me to express interest in getting the project going in the first place, all the way back in August 2014. In March 2015 at that coffee meeting, I had to ask him, in the midst of what had become a chaotic environment, where he stood. He told me, "I'm still in. At this point, I feel a moral commitment to help get this thing off the ground." And get it off the ground, we did....