Sigma Alpha Iota

sai-national.org • Winter 2024 17 of having the GSS surround the audience during a performance to bring them closer to the audience thus breaking that invisible wall between performers and audience. He spoke regularly to the audience to give them a greater understanding of the composer and musical work they were about to hear, deepening their listening experience. Smith was passionate about supporting professional and amateur singers of all ages and mentoring emerging composers and conductors. He co-founded the Association of Professional Vocal Ensembles (now Chorus America) with Margaret Hillis, Margaret Hawkins, and Michael Korn. e organization grew out of a need to advocate for equitable pay for singers in professional vocal ensembles. He later received the Louis Botto Award for Innovative Action and Entrepreneurial Zeal and the coveted Margaret Hillis Award for lifetime choral excellence from Chorus America. Other awards included the Alice M. Ditson Conductors Award and the American Composers Alliance Laurel Leaf award for distinguished achievement in fostering and encouraging American music. In 1973, Smith founded the Adirondack Festival of American Music (AFAM), which was devoted to "our American Musical heritage." vi roughout the three-week summer festival, the GSS and invited guests gave numerous performances including choral concerts, art song recitals, a cabaret, lunch-time musicales, and chamber and orchestral concerts, providing many opportunities for music lovers of all ages to experience works from the choral canon as well as new works by Smith and others. e Adirondack Choral Workshops provided high school and adult singers from surrounding communities with daily voice and theory classes, lessons with GSS members, and performance masterclasses. e AFAM Festival Chorus consisted of community choral singers, high school students, and the GSS who rehearsed large scale choral works throughout the festival in preparation for performance during the last weekend of the festival. Meet the Composer Week featured GSS choral performances of compositions by distinguished composers-in-residence. During the Choral Composers Workshop, a week-long workshop dedicated to mentoring emerging composers, the GSS sightread new compositions and gave feedback from the singers' perspective. Smith and expert composers-in- residence gave compositional feedback. e week culminated in a concert featuring works by Smith, the composers-in-residence, and selected works by the novice composers. e AFAM concluded with two performances, one in Lake Placid and one in Saranac Lake, that featured the GSS, the Festival Chorus, the Adirondack Children's Choir, and the AFAM orchestra. ese concerts, given over forty-three years, oen featured a major work written by historical composers such Bach, Mozart, Monteverdi, Schütz, Haydn, Billings, or a newly written work by Smith, such as his opera Rip Van Winkle or Earth Requiem. vii Smith was also a frequent collaborator with the Syracuse Children's Chorus (SCC) in residence at Syracuse University and the Syracuse University Women's Choir. e SCC produced three of his operas and commissioned the five-movement work Spring Songs, viii scored for children's chorus, which they premiered with operatic soprano and SAI member Eileen Strempel. ix In recognition of Smith, a former GSS member provided funds to establish the Gregg Smith Choral Conducting Scholarship at Syracuse University for graduate choral conductors, and the Biennial Gregg Smith Choral Composition Contest for North American Young Composers (ages 21-35). e Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at Syracuse University Libraries now houses three collections of Gregg Smith materials. e first collection includes Smith's correspondence and original manuscripts of compositions and arrangements for choral, chamber, and solo performers. x e second includes supplemental printed materials, and clippings of the GSS. xi ese materials are available with advance arrangements at the SCRS's Reading Room for reference, or reproduction assistance may be provided by email. xii e third includes an extensive collection of the GSS recordings dating from 1974. xiii Newly digitized recordings have been added to the collection, and work is currently in progress to digitize the historic forty-year New York City Concert Series recordings. Smith is perhaps best known for his composition Now I Walk in Beauty, xiv an original setting of a Navajo prayer in four-part canon. My choirs sang it wherever we were, sometimes in performance and sometimes as a poignant reminder to appreciate the beauty that surrounded us. It truly captured the essence of Smith's life, surrounded by the beauty of choral music and the opportunities he gave to countless singers, composers, and conductors through the choral art. Active in SAI throughout her career, Barbara Marble Tagg, Ed.D. is active as a consultant, adjudicator, and chair of the Syracuse University Alumni Group of Sarasota (FL). Her book, Before the Singing, is published by Oxford University Press. She held national leadership positions in ACDA and Chorus America, and received two ASCAP/Chorus America Awards for Adventuresome Programming with the Syracuse Children's Chorus, which she founded. She is retired from Syracuse University music education faculty where she conducted the SU Women's Choir. Her mother was an SAI Patroness, and her daughter-in- law is an SAI. i Frank R. Rossiter, Charles Ives and His America. W. W. Norton & Company, 1975. Cposers Gregg Smith: composer, conductor, Gregg Smith: composer, conductor, and founder of The Gregg Smith Singers and founder of The Gregg Smith Singers SMITH continued on page 21

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