Stephen Smith was born in the United States in 1955 and has lived in Switzerland since 1982. His musical life began at the age of seven at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. After completing his studies in organ, church music and conducting in the United States and Switzerland, Smith began devoting himself intensively to Renaissance and Baroque music. He is especially interested in historically informed performance practice, which has borne fruit in more than 200 concerts in Switzerland and abroad with his Ensemble Corund of Lucerne, which he founded in 1993. He serves as cantor and organist at St. Matthew’s Church in Lucerne and directs several choirs.
Engagements with his ensemble, as guest conductor, and as organist, have taken him to England, Spain, Germany, Poland, Latvia, the Bermudas, and the United States, as well as throughout Switzerland. With his ensembles, Smith has played an influential role on the Swiss Baroque scene due to his early interest in propagating Joshua Rifkin’s one-voice-per part ideal for the vocal works of Bach. Thus, it is with the smallest of forces that he has performed the Mass in B minor, the six motets, the Lutheran Masses, the Magnificat, the Passions and many of the cantatas
in well-received concerts in Switzerland and the United States. In 2002, for the one hundredth anniversary of Mauric Duruflé’s birth, Smith led performances of that composer’s complete church music in addition to orchestral and organ works — a unique event in Switzerland. He has given the Lucerne premiere of the London chamber version of Brahms’ German Requiem, and has performed the first version of Rossini’s Petite messe solendnelle for 12 voices accompanied by two pianos and harmonium. He was the first conductor to give a Swiss performance of Britten’s early vocal work A Boy Was Born and also conducted the first Lucerne performance of Britten’s cantata Saint Nicholas. Smith has also been the first musician to give live performances in central Switzerland of Mexican Baroque music, Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri in conjunction with video artist Judith Albert, Victoria’s Tenebrae Reponsorien with improvisations by jazz singer Lauren Newton, as well as the complete concertos for two, three, and four keyboards by J. S. Bach. For the last twenty years, Smith has been artistic director of a concert series in Lucerne. He has recorded many CDs and radio broadcasts which testify to a broad range of interests and activities.
