Andrew Smith (b. 1970) is a British-Norwegian composer with a growing international reputation for choral and vocal music that links tradition with a contemporary idiom.
Smith read music and English at the University of Oslo. His composing, a hobby since the age of eight, began in earnest in the late 1990s when he wrote a piece for the newly-formed Trio Mediaeval (Norway). The subsequent recording of this and other music for the Trio brought him to the attention of the American audience and led the way to collaborations with groups such as New York Polyphony and Gothic Voices.
His Requiem, composed for the Nidaros Cathedral Girls’ Choir in response to the tragic events in Norway in July 2011, premiered in Trondheim in 2012. The work is featured on the Nidaros Cathedral Girls Choir album LUX, which was awarded a Grammy for Best Immersive Audio Album in January 2020.
He has been commissioned and performed by numerous choirs in Norway and abroad. Recent commissions include Lukaspasjon, a setting in Norwegian of the Passion according to St. Luke for Oslo Cathedral Choir, and O Antiphons for the Khorikos chamber choir in New York, premiered in December 2019.
Smith’s musical style is best summed up in the words of Alexandra Coghlan: “…[his] compositions incorporate medieval textures and chant, which are reflected and inflected through [his] own contemporary idiom, blurring the modal clarity of plainchant with vivid cluster-chords and dissenting moments of chromatic or dissonant color. The effect is at once familiar and unsettling in its strangeness – a distorted and original viewpoint on the past.”
