Heather Smith and Cahill Smith
Lee University School of Music will host Dr. Cahill Smith, piano, and Heather Smith, cello, for a faculty recital on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Squires Recital Hall. There will be a short pre-concert talk with the artists at 7 p.m.
The program will feature works by late-romantic Russian composers Nikolai Medtner, Nikolai Myaskovsky, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
“This program, all composed within a period of 50 years, represents a peak in the tradition of high romanticism that continued in Russia well into the 20th century,” said Dr. Smith. “This music is charged with emotion, touching on universal subjects that are central to the human experience: love, nature, time, death, and God.”
Dr. Smith, assistant professor of piano at Lee, has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in major venues in the United States and abroad, including four performances at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.
Dr. Smith has been featured as a concerto soloist with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the Chattanooga Symphony, the Eastman Philharmonia, the Mongolian Symphony Orchestra, and the National Ukrainian Symphony Orchestra in Kiev, among others.
His live and studio recordings have been broadcast on WQXR, New York’s Classical Music Radio Station; WCRB, Classical Radio Boston; and WSMC, Chattanooga Public Radio. In January of 2019, his debut album “Medtner: Forgotten Melodies” was featured as Classical Radio Boston’s “CD of the Week” for its “irresistible lyricism” and “a palpable sense of love – a real affinity for the directness and honesty in Medtner’s music, which goes straight to the heart.”
Dr. Smith completed his Doctor of Musical Arts from Eastman, where he was the inaugural recipient of the Douglas Lowry Award for excellence in degree recital performance, won the Eastman Concerto Competition, and received honors in chamber music as well as the Prize for Excellence in Teaching. He earned his Master of Arts at University of Michigan and his Bachelor of Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Ms. Smith performs regularly in the U.S. as a chamber and orchestra musician. She plays frequently with the Alabama Symphony, the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, the Greenville Symphony, the Jackson Symphony, and the Oak Ridge Symphony. She also performs with chamber programs at Austin Peay State University, Covenant College, Lee University, Southern Adventist University, and the University of Tennessee Chattanooga.
Ms. Smith has served as principal cellist of the Orford Academy Orchestra in Quebec, Canada, as well as the Colorado College Summer Music Festival Orchestra. She currently maintains a private cello studio in the Chattanooga area.
She is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where she studied with David Ying of the Ying Quartet.
The Tuesday evening recital is free and open to the public. Squires Recital Hall is located in Lee’s Humanities Building on Parker Street.
For more information, call 614-8240 or email music@leeuniversity.edu.