Discipline: Music Composition

Leo Smit

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Buffalo, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1954
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Leo Smit (1921–1999) was an American composer and pianist. He often gave thematic recitals – sometimes illustrated with his own slides – and performed a great deal of new music, especially works by Aaron Copland. His breakthrough as a composer came in 1957, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra played his First Symphony. In that year he moved to Los Angeles to teach at the University of California. From 1962 he taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He wrote two operas: The Alchemy of Love (1969), in collaboration with the British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, with whom he also worked on an oratorio about Copernicus; and Magic Water (1978). Later in his life, he composed nearly 100 songs to texts by Emily Dickinson.

Studios

Barnard

Leo Smit worked in the Barnard studio.

Originally built near MacDowell's Union Street entrance, the Barnard Studio — which was funded by Barnard College music students — was re-located to its current site in 1910. When the small structure was moved, its size was doubled with the addition of a second room. This remodeling, financed by Mrs. Thomas E. Emery of Cincinnati…

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