Michael Peter Smith, Songwriter

Performance blog & Michael’s touring schedule

Favorite Youtube: Dead Egyptian Blues

“In truth, it is only in the last 10, 15 years that I have come to understand how precious it is, the chance to create. One is lucky to get to write songs and luckier still to make a living this way.” (Lake Forester Sun Times/Pioneer Press)

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“Michael Smith stands out as one of the few undisputed geniuses among singer-songwriters.” (Sing Out! Magazine)

Here’s what Mr. Chuang-Tzu has to say about home towns
If your life is true you don’t have to go far
To find heaven and earth on the rim of your doorway
To have ocean and sky everywhere that you are

 

Wherever you go
Whatever you do
He stays in your head…

 

 

 

Let us go to the banks of the ocean
Where the walls rise above the Zuider Zee
Long ago I used to be a young man
And dear Margaret remembers that for me

Wherever he is – touring concert venues, clubs, theaters, folk festivals,
at house concerts, and teaching writing workshops. In powerful songs, award-winning musical scores, and unforgettable recordings – musical mastery is in whatever he does.

Sister Clarissa could have been on the stage
But Jesus came over and told her
He’d rather she taught the fifth grade

You’ve seen Michael perform, or heard him speak, you know what stands out about him.
If you haven’t – book him now.

Artist Management: Jamie O’Reilly
PH/Text 773.203.7661

 

There are some ways I’m just like him
Some ways he was just like me
And sometimes when the mirror’s dim
His face is clear to see

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Master of the Story Song

“Michael Smith is a master of the story song and the character sketch, invoking a Carver-like economy at the one end and the subtlety of Proust at the other…In his characters, whimsy and humor mingle with much darker intimations. Each song comes from a place so vividly evoked that it makes you want to go and live, not there, but rather more completely in your own life. “ (Foley Schuler)

“Hearing the songs of Michael Smith in this day and age is like reading an anthology of Hemingway’s short stories after decades of only comic books. It’s a realization that songs can hold a whole lot more than they’re usually expected to hold, they can possess a genuine sense of place and time as evocative and magical as the finest literature.” (Paul Zollo)

Michael Smith, the lyricist, composer and performer of renown, is a voracious reader and never at a loss for material. As early as age 16, when he set the words that appeared on the grave of Robert Louis Stevenson, Michael was adapting and setting literature, children’s stories, and poetry to music.

Michael’s songs set poems by F. Garcia Lorca (Five in the Afternoon), Wallace Stevens (Blue Guitar), Chilean poets Gabriela Mistral (Swallow) and Pablo Neruda, as well as Irish poetry (“Songs of the Kerry Madwoman:), set in a chamber opera, with poems by Patricia Monaghan and Chinese Tang Dynasty poets (Painted Horse). Passages from Robert Cole’s “The Spiritual Lives of Children” were transformed in We Become Birds. The words of essayist Ann Carson appear in a surprising way in Michael’s song Seurat. Watch for “And the Poet Sang”, a performance for the Poetry Foundation in Chicago on September 14/15 2012.

Everyone’s a giant when you’re a little kid
Everyone’s a giant but you

Composer – Michael in the theater

Michael’s extensive musical catalog as a composer includes scores he’s written for theatrical productions.  In his theatrical debut Michael composed and performed the music for the Steppenwolf production of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes Of Wrath”, touring with the cast and director Frank Galati from The Royal George Theater in Chicago to the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, from the National Theater in London to Broadway, where the play won the Antoinette Perry Award for Best Play, 1990. Letters from Michael’s sisters contributed to the 1994 production “Michael Margaret Pat & Kate” at Victory Gardens, which won four Joseph Jefferson awards, for Best Revue, Best Actor In A Review, Best Original Music and Best Production. A 17 year collaboration with Jamie O’Reilly resulted in “Pasiones: Songs Of The Spanish Civil War” at Chicago’s Theater on the Lake and Lunar Cabaret and touring, returning to Victory Gardens with the revue “Hello Dali”, the ballet “The Gift of The Magi”, and their newest offering “Songs of a Catholic Childhood”. Anne Hills commissioned Michael to set mystical child savant Opal Whiteley’s diary entries for “The Heartsongs Of Opal Whitely”.

Michael is the 2010 recipient of the prestigious
Hans Christian Andersen Award for his adaption of
The Snow Queen, for which he also wrote the musical score.

Puppeteer Blair Thomas and Michael collaborated on the musical for Victory Gardens.  Blair and Michael’s other collaborations nlcude Oscar Wilde’s “The Selfish Giant” for Chicago Children’s Theater, and a meditation on “Moby Dick,” with lyrics adapted from Melville’s classic prose.

The songs of Michael Smith are published by Bird Avenue Publishing,
learn more here. Contact Dolly Z dmzx333@gmail.com

 

“The thing that stands out most in Michael’s work is his unpredictable creativity just when you think you know where he’s going, lyrically or musically, he’ll turn a metaphoric corner on you, double back, sneak up behind you and slip a rainbow in your pocket.” (Hill Country House Concerts, Bulverde Texas)

 

 

 

Information

Download One-Sheet: MichaelPeterSmith-JOReilly-flyer
Michael News & Gigs 
FACEBOOK FAN PAGE “Michael P. Smith, Songwriter”
Michael’s website:michaelsmithmusic.com

Listen to Michael
The_Dutchman_Kerrville, 07
-Interview with WGN Radio host Rick Kogan
-Buy downloads at CD Baby

Credits
B & W photo (above right) by Suzanne Plunkett
Center 2 photos by Kevin Viol
Michael with a beret J. Friedrich
One Sheet – Main Royal Design