Michael Smith

The Gift of the Magi Composer, Michael Smith, “Master of the Story Song” "When things look grim and tattered, it's the love she gives to him that matters. Truth be told, it's the love he gives to her, that's gold and frankincense and myrrh." Hearing the songs of Michael Smith in this day and age is like reading an anthology of short stories by Hemingway 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 posses a genuine sense of place and time as evocative and magical as the finest literature. -Paul Zollo, Songtalk Magazine Michael Smith, the lyricist, composer and featured performer of “The Gift of the Magi” is a voracious reader and never at a loss for material. Smith has an over thirty-year history of adapting great literature into song, for theater works, publication and recording. The impressive list includes musical scores for touring productions of Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology (featuring the popular title song, one of his signature ballads) and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Steppenwolf Theater’s Broadway hit and 1990 Tony Award-winning play. The play’s songs now comprise the score of Grapes of Wrath, a new folk opera. In recent years the critically celebrated Smith has adapted the poetry of Gabriela Mistral, Garcia Lorca, Ann Carson, Wallace Stevens and Tang Dynasty poets. Passages from Robert Cole's bestseller The Spiritual Lives of Children were transformed into the beautiful song "We Become Birds." Fairy tales also inspire his songs, he’s create music for from the Brother’s Grimm’s Master Stitchum and the Moon (now on book and compact disc) and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen which is scheduled to premiere at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago next season. In addition to the new The Gift of the Magi score and compact disc based on O. Henry’s classic story, Michael is writing music for a children’s opera based on Oscar Wilde‘s The Happy Prince, with master puppeteer Blair Thomas. Michael and Jamie are creating music for Homefront, a production which features DePaul University Fellow Patricia Monaghan’s award-winning poems about soldier’s heart and the effect of war on the veterans and their families. Previews take place in spring, 2004. 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. "There must be a heaven. God knows I've seen mostly hell," muses a protagonist of "Spoon River," and like that song, each 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. -Music Critic Foley Schuler Bookings for Michael: www.michaelsmithmusic.com