Bill Smith (jazz musician)

American clarinetist and composer (1926–2020)

William Overton Smith (September 22, 1926 – February 29, 2020) was an American clarinetist and composer. He worked extensively in modern classical music, third stream and jazz, and was perhaps best known for having played with pianist Dave Brubeck intermittently from the 1940s to the early 2000s. Smith frequently recorded jazz under the name Bill Smith, but his classical compositions are credited under the name William O. Smith.

Smith was born in Sacramento and grew up in Oakland, California, where he began playing clarinet at the age of ten. He put together a jazz group to play for dances at 13, and at the age of 15 he joined the Oakland Symphony. He idolized Benny Goodman, but after high school, a brief cross country tour with a dance band ended his romance for the life of a traveling jazz musician. He gave two weeks' notice when the band reached Washington, D. C. Encouraged by an older band member, Smith moved to New York. He began his formal music studies at the Juilliard School, playing in New York jazz clubs like Kelly's Stables at night. Uninspired by the Juilliard faculty, he returned to California upon hearing and admiring the music of Darius Milhaud, who was then teaching at Mills College in Oakland. At Mills, Smith met pianist Dave Brubeck, with whom he often played until Brubeck's 2012 death. Smith was a member of the Dave Brubeck Octet, and later occasionally subbed for saxophonist Paul Desmond in the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Brubeck's 1960 albums The Riddle and Brubeck à la mode featured Smith performing his own compositions with Brubeck's quartet. Smith rejoined Brubeck's group in the 1990s. He studied composition with Roger Sessions at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was graduated with a bachelor's and a master's degree.

Winning the Prix de Paris presented Smith the opportunity for two years of study at the Paris Conservatory, and in 1957, he was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome and spent six years in that city. He has since received numerous other awards, including two Guggenheim grants. After a teaching stint at the University of Southern California, Smith began a thirty year career at the University of Washington School of Music in Seattle, where he taught music composition and performance, co leading the forward thinking Contemporary Group, first with Robert Suderburg, and then with trombonist Stuart Dempster, from 1966 to 1997. In 1947, Smith composed Schizophrenic Scherzo for the Brubeck Octet, one of the earliest works that successfully integrated jazz and classical techniques, a style that later was given the name "third stream" by Gunther Schuller. Smith investigated and cataloged a wide range of extended techniques on the clarinet, including the use of two clarinets simultaneously by a single performer, inspired by images of the ancient aulos encountered during a trip to Greece, numerous multiphonics, playing the instrument with a cork in the bell, and the "clar flute," a technique that involves removing the instrument's mouthpiece and playing it as an end blown flute. As William O. Smith, he wrote several pioneering pieces that feature many of these techniques, including Duo for Flute and Clarinet (1961) and Variants for Solo Clarinet (1963). In an article titled "Contemporary Clarinet Sonorities" (Selmer Bandwagon no. 67, fall 1972, pp. 12–14), Smith compiled the first comprehensive catalogue of fingerings for clarinet multiphonics. He was among the early composers interested in electronic music, and as a performer he continued to experiment with amplified clarinet and electronic delays. He remained active nationally, internationally, and on the local Seattle music scene until well into his 90s. In 2008, he composed, recorded, and premiered a "jazzopera" (his preferred term) titled Space in the Heart.

Smith had four children. He died at age 93 in his home from complications of prostate cancer on February 29, 2020.