By Carol Olechowski

For Kirk Smith, music education was a natural career choice. The field blended his love of teaching and music — and enabled him to emulate his father, who taught fifth and sixth grades. “I wanted to combine two things I thought I could do really well, and to have an influence on both,” recalls the Baltimore native.

Smith’s vocation has enabled him to shine as a leader: the leader of the University at Albany’s orchestra and concert band and the newly re-established Pep Band, to be precise.

As a music education major at Winchester, Virginia’s Shenandoah Conservatory, Smith drew inspiration from his high school teacher, John Merrill; college faculty member Steven Johnston, who is still at Shenandoah; and “a whole host of people who never met me, but I admired them.” He earned both a bachelor’s degree and a performance certificate in clarinet, his instrument of choice. In 1979, at age 21, he made his conducting début in Virginia, with a performance of Charles Ives’s “The Unanswered Question.”

After teaching music for a year in the Tuscarora, Pa., school district, Smith earned a master’s in conducting while serving as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music. In the years since, he has taught at Georgia State, Iowa State and California State University at Hayward.

Smith has also garnered plenty of experience outside of the classroom. Over the past two decades, he has worked with the Colorado Youth Symphony, the Denver Chamber Orchestra, and other orchestras in Georgia, Colorado and Iowa. As a guest conductor with symphonies from Louisiana, Minnesota and California to Mexico and Taiwan, he has worked with such notables as violinist Robert McDuffie, vocalists Simon Estes and Hilda Harris, and composers Alvin Singleton and William Russo.

So what attracted Smith to UAlbany in 1999? He credits former College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Hoffmann, who now holds that position at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with “encouraging me to apply. We worked together at Iowa State, and he felt I would be a good fit for the music department. It’s always nice to be wanted, so I applied.”

At Albany, Smith has taught courses in conducting; ear training; music appreciation and Black American Music, a survey course he created. Through his teaching, he seeks to make his students aware of the value of “what a composer has written, not just in terms of music, but in terms of atmosphere, social climate and era. Music is such an integral part of most of our lives, but only a small percentage of people create music.” Although he admits to composing “just for myself,” he does plan to complete and perform an original orchestral work, “A Gem for All This Land.” The title of that work, a short piece in his mother’s honor, was taken from the description of her in her yearbook from the nursing program at Union University — now Albany Medical Center, according to Smith. Gloria Smith, who passed away about ten years ago, spent her entire career at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Smith has also reprised the Pep Band, which he sees as a way to boost school spirit at UAlbany’s athletic events. “It’s important that there be an investment of student and community spirit, and I think live groups contribute to that investment.” To that end, he assembled about 15 Pep Band members whose performances last season “really got students, alumni and community members into the spirit of supporting Albany’s sports teams. We kept all of our commitments, and we’re counting on doing the same this year.”

Smith, who is co-conductor of Chicago’s Black Music Repertory Ensemble, also maintains affiliations with numerous other organizations, including the Conductors Guild and the American String Teachers Association/National School Orchestra Association. Reed Hoyt, chairman of UAlbany’s Department of Music, appreciates the heightened visibility Smith has given both the department and the University. “Our instrumental program is already beginning to stabilize and grow, which is the benefit of having a full-time person with experience administering it. Kirk’s expertise in African-American music and his development of a course in that area have already enhanced cross-disciplinary instruction at the University. He is a wonderful ambassador for us in his work as a clinician and prominent member of the Conductors Guild,” Hoyt observes.

But above all, Smith loves teaching. “For me,” he explains, “the best part of my work is watching my students grow, and seeing how the orchestra and the band can be woven into the fabric of the community at large.”

Kirk Smith conducts the University-Community Symphony Orchestra.

Kirk Smith will conduct the UAlbany Orchestra and the University Band in separate programs to be presented at 8 p.m. October 21 and 22, respectively, at the University’s Performing Arts Center. For more information, please contact the Department of Music at (518) 442-4187.