Photographer: Sami Eudy
Dr. Marie Smith is an active teacher and performer. She is currently on faculty at Pittsburg State University as the adjunct horn instructor as well as the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, teaching high brass lessons and music appreciation. Dr. Smith has performed in a variety of ensemble settings including symphony and pit orchestras; wind, horn, and brass ensembles; and wind and brass quintets. Marie previously taught at Colby College in Waterville, Maine where she also performs as principal horn in the Colby Symphony Orchestra and Colby Wind Ensemble.
An enthusiastic ensemble performer, Marie has played with the Utah Festival Opera, Idaho Falls Opera Theater, the American Festival Orchestra and New American Philharmonic in Utah as well as the Eastern Festival Orchestra in North Carolina. She played in the pit orchestra for the world premiere of South Pass! The Musical in Jackson, WY. Marie has attended multiple summer festivals including the Kent/Blossom Music Festival, Hot Springs Music Festival, Marrowstone Music Festival, and the Eastern Music Festival. Throughout her career, Marie has shared the stage with soloists such as Mark O’Connor, Lynn Harrell, and William Wolfram and played in masterclasses for William VerMeulen, Radovan Vlatkovic, Froydis Ree Wekre, Julie Landsman, Daniel Gingrich, David Jolley, Imani Winds, the New York Woodwind Quintet, the American Brass Quintet, and the Stiletto Brass Quintet.
Dr. Smith has enjoyed numerous outreach and educational engagements across the country. She assisted with the natural horn course and taught secondary horn lessons while at Eastman. She has also lead sectionals and taught lessons at schools throughout North Carolina’s Forsyth County School District both independently and through ArtistCorps (an outreach program at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts that serves Title 1 schools), performed with the Utah State University Horn Quartet for schools and retirement communities in Cache Valley, UT, volunteered at Utah State middle and high school band festivals and clinics, and worked as a summer camp counselor at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan.
Along with performance, Marie enjoys reading and research. Marie’s topics of research cover a broad spectrum spanning from the influence of the vocal improvisatory tradition on Rossini’s Prelude Theme and Variations for Horn and Piano, to the pervasive gender ideology surrounding women in brass performance, to the need to include sound quality as a metric along with physical sensation to understand best physical use in pedagogy. Her article, Natural Horn Technique Guiding Modern Orchestral Performance, is published in the May and October 2016 issues of the Horn Call, the official journal of the International Horn Society. It was also presented orally at the Southeast Horn Workshop in 2017.
Dr. Smith holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music, a Masters of Music degree from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and a Bachelors of Music degree from Utah State University. Her primary teachers include Professor W. Peter Kurau, Dr. Maria Serkin, Dr. Joseph Falvey, and Steve Park. She has also worked with Maura McCune Corvington, Richard King, Alan DeMattia, Dr. Margaret Tung, Joy Branagan, and Robert Rearden.