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Paul Ely Smith: Home

Palouse late afternoon

Thanks for visiting!

I have started chipping away on a CD of music for fretless gourd banjo, and I have just posted the first finished track, "Cluck Old Hen," in the music section, which you can hear it by clicking on "music" on the right side of this page. You can also check out two cuts from my "Mosaic" CD, and a recently-posted track from a CD I'm producing for mandolin virtuoso Richard Kriehn, an arrangement I made of Beethoven's "Sonatine in C for piano and mandolin."

In the last few years I've been producing CDs for other people and I have decided to post examples of some of those recent productions as well. Besides demonstrating a bit of my range as a producer, it also presents some of the impressively-talented musicians we have here in our little corner of Washington State. The latest track is by Tiana Gregg, and you should go listen to it.

In addition, I have decided to post a few things in the "music" section that have never been released, beginning with a recording I made in 2005 of my "Wind Quintet," performed by the WSU Solstice Woodwind Quintet, and a live recording of "Canntaireachd" for choir, a piece I composed in 1990.

In other exciting news, I have started a blog, which you can get to by clicking on "links" on the right, and I recently posted an article I published 'way back in 1992 on the 19th-century roots of the banjo in the "press" section. Now I really have to get do work on that gourd banjo CD, too!

Paul Ely Smith

musician, composer, performer, producer, instrument builder