Hopkinson Smith

born in 1946 in New York City, NY, United States

Hopkinson Smith

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Francis Hopkinson Smith.

Hopkinson Smith (born December 7, 1946) is an American lutenist, composer and pedagogue, longtime resident in Basel, Switzerland.

Born in New York, he graduated from Harvard with Honors in Music (Honors Thesis on "The pavans of Daniel Bacheler"[1]). He moved to Europe in 1973 to study with Emilio Pujol, as well as Eugen Mueller-Dombois.

In the mid-1970s, Hopkinson Smith was involved in the founding of the ensemble Hespèrion XX, which led to his ten-year collaboration with Jordi Savall.

Since the mid 80s, Hopkinson Smith has focused principally on solo music for early plucked instruments. These include the vihuela, Renaissance lute, theorbo, Renaissance and Baroque guitars and the baroque lute.

His 2000 recording of the Bach sonatas and partitas for solo violin adapted for Baroque Lute has been called 'arguably the best you can buy of these works on any instrument' by Gramophone magazine.[2]

Hopkinson Smith gives concerts and master classes throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North and South America. He currently lives in Basel, Switzerland, where he teaches at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

Composer

Smith's CDs contain a number of pieces that he composed himself using thematic ideas borrowed from Francesco da Milano.[3]

Teacher

Smith's students include Edin Karamazov and Yasunori Imamura.

References

  1. The pavans of Daniel Bacheler by Hopkinson Smith; Honors thesis - Harvard, 1972.
  2. Bach: Sonatas and Partitas (Review). Gramophone Review. John Duarte - Gramophone - July 2000.
  3. Journal of the Lute Society of America, volume 40

External links

This page was last modified 27.01.2014 03:22:41

This article uses material from the article Hopkinson Smith from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and it is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.