University at Buffalo Libraries - Music - Leo Smit Exhibit

Remembering Leo Smit (1921-1999)

Buffalo and Beyond

Please click on the images to see fuller versions.

Leo Smit lived in Buffalo for thirty-six years. He moved to the city in 1962 when he was appointed Slee Visiting Professor of Music at the State University of New York at Buffalo. After a year in which he presented three well-received lecture-recitals, Smit was appointed to the full-time faculty of the music department in 1963. In this position he taught piano and composition until his retirement in 1984. Smit continued to live in Buffalo until 1998, when he moved to Southern California.
Smit presented the first of his Slee lecture-recitals, Narrative, Thoughts, and Digressions, on October 5, 1962.

Smit often created innovative concert programs that combined musical genres or different media. One lecture-recital that he presented was Self-portraits in Words and Music. It combined musical selections and readings from diaries and letters from composers such as Mozart, Schumann, Chopin, Bartók, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. Another of these thematic programs was The Masters Write Jazz. It was a program that he especially enjoyed presenting while on tours of foreign countries.
While in Buffalo, Smit had his music performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra on two occasions. The first was in 1965 when he conducted the world premiere performance of his Symphony No. 2.
Lukas Foss, with whom Smit had been a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 1950-51, conducted Smit's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra on November 24, 1968, with Smit as soloist.

Smit's life in Buffalo did not preclude him from continuing to present concerts abroad. In 1967-68 the State Department selected him as an artist to make a concert tour of sixteen Latin American countries.

March 4, 1967, article about upcoming concerts by Leo Smit in Caracas, Venezuela, during his State Department tour.

Leo Smit with students at the National Conservatory, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, March 10, 1967

Photograph courtesy of Nils Vigeland on behalf of the Leo Smit estate.

On February 23, 1969, Smit presented a concert of Latin American music at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. As part of the program he also showed slides from his travels in Latin American countries. This was one of several times that Smit presented a program of this sort, in which he combined visual and musical elements.

The photograph on the cover of the program features a photograph by Leo Smit of Machu Pichu in Peru.

Program courtesy of Nils Vigeland on behalf of the Leo Smit estate.

Smit also made a tour of Eastern European countries in 1980, including Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The trip to Russia allowed Smit to return to the land where his parents were born and where he had studied piano with Dmitri Kabalevsky as an eight-year old in 1929. The following program is from a concert that Smit presented on November 22, 1980, in Vojvodina, Yugoslavia.

Program courtesy of Nils Vigeland on behalf of the Leo Smit estate.

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April 2000
Music Library Staff
musique@acsu.buffalo.edu
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/music/exhibits/smit/buffalo.html

Leo Smit lived in Buffalo for thirty-six years. He moved to the city in 1962 when he was appointed Slee Visiting Professor of Music at the State University of New York at Buffalo. After a year in which he presented three well-received lecture-recitals, Smit was appointed to the full-time faculty of the music department in 1963. In this position he taught piano and composition until his retirement in 1984. Smit continued to live in Buffalo until 1998, when he moved to Southern California. Smit presented the first of his Slee lecture-recitals, Narrative, Thoughts, and Digressions, on October 5, 1962.
	Smit often created innovative concert programs that combined musical genres or different media. One lecture-recital that he presented was Self-portraits in Words and Music. It combined musical selections and readings from diaries and letters from composers such as Mozart, Schumann, Chopin, Bartók, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. Another of these thematic programs was The Masters Write Jazz. It was a program that he especially enjoyed presenting while on tours of foreign countries.
While in Buffalo, Smit had his music performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra on two occasions. The first was in 1965 when he conducted the world premiere performance of his Symphony No. 2. Lukas Foss, with whom Smit had been a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 1950-51, conducted Smit's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra on November 24, 1968, with Smit as soloist.