 You're so fortunate and lucky today to have Richard, which I'm going to refer to Richard, your other name, which is Richard Smith, because it's easier to pronounce if that's okay with you. And so, you know, we call you the magical composer from Wisconsin. So the first question I have for you is something that you and I have discussed, and you know, I got an email from you recently, and that is, tell us how you got into this composition framework. I mean, how did you begin getting interested in composing music? Because it goes back to your childhood, and I think that's very interesting. Yeah, it really does, because what I first got interested in music, it was but through playing the piano. My sister played the piano at home, and I liked what I heard, and she played a lot of Mozart, and so I decided at a very young age when I was three years old that I wanted to play Mozart, too. And so after she would finish playing, I'd sit down at the piano and try my best. And my mother finally said to her, you know, Marion, you should really teach Richard how to play the piano. And my sister said, well, that's not so easy for a three year old. He can't even read words yet. So somehow she invented some way of making it so that I was actually able to read music off of the printed page when I was three and a half years old. That's amazing, what she was able to do was the next step was to actually write like Mozart, right? And so I wanted to write pieces of music, too. And so I eventually got down to that when I was seven years old. That's how I started. And, you know, didn't you also do things like in high school? And, I mean, this career didn't start before you, I mean, your career really began when you were older. But didn't you have some sort of musical ability and function when you were in high school? Well, yeah, I always say that my musical career began in kindergarten because when I was in kindergarten, the teacher saw that I could play the piano. So I was asked to play the Star-Spangled Banner for the assembly at school, which was kindergarten through sixth grade. And I was really scared, but I played it. And so that was my first exposure to an audience. So I really wasn't so scared in terms of playing in front of other people. And I know that that can be a major deal for a lot of people. They may know how to play, but they don't want to play for other people. They're afraid of making mistakes and stuff like that. My sister was kind of like that, but it didn't bother me. And I enjoyed the reaction that I got. And when I was in high school, yeah, I was in the orchestra and I did play piano in the orchestra. I kind of fumbled my way through the clarinet for a little while. And then they put me on percussion, so I got familiar with that too. But eventually it always came back to the piano. And in my senior year, I played Mozart's Piano Concerto in B-flat major as part of the concert in senior year. OK, you've now mentioned Mozart twice, so I have to ask you this question. Is the film Amadeus, does it have any reality in it? I mean, is there or is it just fictional? Well, I don't really know the answer to that question. I know that Mozart was a very talented composer and that saw the area was very envious of what Mozart could do. But I think there's a lot of fiction in there, but it makes for good theater. Oh, it certainly does. OK, let's go back to you. So where did you get your formal training? You know, and I mentioned formal training because I'm talking about college or graduate school, et cetera. Right. So my formal training, well, I took piano lessons for a very long time. And then that was through high school. And then after that, when I was in college, I took summer school classes and I took them at Columbia University and I took courses in harmony and counterpoint. And then when I graduated from Fordham and went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, I took more classes in composition. But like I was telling you before, I I really feel that in terms of the best teachers that I had were the music that I listened to and the stories that I heard from other people. Well, so now that begs the question. So who did you listen to and how did they influence you? OK, so Mozart and then, of course, I played the sonatas of Beethoven, which were very, very challenging and Bach meant a lot to me. And Bach was very difficult and very challenging, but very worthwhile. And I was not afraid of making mistakes when I was when I was playing and I wanted to imitate those styles. So I began writing little fugues and I began writing little sonatas. And then when I was in high school, I became involved in a band besides the orchestra. And we played different music. We played music that was rock music. And when I got into college, I joined a rock band. And then after that, when I actually started teaching in the early days, I got a job as a band on the road. I left teaching for a couple of years to pursue a full time career as a composer and as a musician. And I was writing all kinds of different styles of music, rock and country music and all that stuff. But really, basically down there deep inside me was my love for classical music. So Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, I loved. I loved Stravinsky, Shostakovich, the Russians. I liked the Greek, the Romantic composers, which actually leads to a to a wonderful story about mistakes. In a Juilliard School of Music, there was a very, very famous teacher. And her name was Rosina Levine. And she was no small deal. She was born in the Ukraine, actually, their family lived in Kiev. And they were Jewish and she was also had Dutch heritage. And she came to be a teacher at the Juilliard School of Music. And I knew people at Fordham who actually had friends at the Juilliard. And so when I went over to that school and I talked to different people and they told me a story about her, about how she had wanted to enrich this one piano student who she was having trouble with interpreting music correctly. And she told him that Arthur Rubinstein, the famous pianist, was giving a concert of three romantic concertos all in one evening. Grieg and Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. This was a concert that she was going to attend and she told the student to do it. And the student went to the concert and so did she. And at the next lesson, she asked him what he thought of the concert. And he said, you know, the thing that surprised me the most was how many mistakes Rubinstein made, especially in the Greek concerto and in the Tchaikovsky concerto. I just couldn't believe it. And Rosina Levine said to him, so you heard him play, but you didn't listen to the music and that had a really big impact on me. And so when what I play, I try to put my heart and soul into it. And I'm not concentrating on making mistakes. And I do a lot of improvisation at the piano. And at the same time as I was teaching, I also got a job as a church musician here in West Bend. And I was a church musician for 30 years. And what I would play a lot of the times I would improvise during communion or were doing a presentation of the gifts or like that. And people would come up to me and they would ask me what I had played. And I said, well, I played what was going through my mind at that time, which was a combination of a whole lot of different things. Did you, as a church musician, did you was it prescribed or were you working from your own, were you working from your own music? Well, that's kind of half and half. We I was the one who chose the music that was being played. And I chose a lot of music which had been written and published. And much of the music that I did actually do was written by me. And some of it was published by Oregon Catholic Press and Trinity Music. They published some of the pieces that I did. And so it's a combination, Carl, of both. Did you, you know, I've always, you know, often when I go into churches and of course, I will go often around Christmas time. And of course, they're always playing handle. And I'm wondering if handle was the person that you went to in your own church music? Well, we did handle it Christmas time. Yes. And also at Easter time, because it's very, very famous and very beautiful music. Yeah. And it was important. And again, he's a composer from that period, which is one of my favorite periods of music. And that's what I kind of that's why comfort music. And I think that the thing that's the most important to me about music is that I didn't get bogged down with making mistakes. And that I continued to write, even though my orchestral music that I was writing was really not being performed at that time. But I still had my musical diary and I took notes every day and I played every day and playing was my strongest suit and improvisation at the piano in church was very, very strong for me. But music is something which is something that's been so much a part of my life, I wouldn't think of not being with it. And having that diary really helped me stay connected with music all the time and with composition. OK, you mentioned something about your youth and I have to ask you this. So when you were young and playing rock and roll and enjoying rock and roll, who did you who did you like and who did you admire in the rock and roll field? Then we'll then go back to classical music. Yeah. Well, the the musicians that would that I thought were the greatest with the Beatles, I thought they were great. In fact, you know, even today, I think of, you know, Jake Shimamukuro, who plays the ukulele. When I was in in Honolulu one time, I was in the park. What is Queen Capulani? You know, the Capulani Park right there. And they have a shell there. And Jake Shimamukuro was actually giving a free concert. And you could hear the music and I was drawn to it. I went over to it and he was playing while my guitar gently weeps by George Harrison. And what he did with it was so magnificent because he took that music and he improvised on it and he put his soul into it. And that's one of the wonderful things about classical music or even about good rock music based on classical tradition traditions. After all, they did Eleanor Rigby for a string quartet and the vocals. So I that's it's so rich to me. It's a wonderful thing. Well, it's interesting that you pick the Beatles because the Beatles have been adapted, you know, often by by classical musicians. Yes. And it's I'm not sure it's because of the melodies or, you know, why the Beatles, but it's, you know, classical music, much less department stores and and grocery stores and things like that. So OK, let's get down to the nitty gritty. And so you had mentioned to me that you love to come to Hawaii and to the Hawaiian Islands to compose. So let's hear why. Why why Hawaii? Well, the that. Well, the way it is, I became so attached to Hawaii after I was teaching in those summer schools that I was at at home and I came to just love the people and I really love the place. My time for composing is in the morning. In the morning, it's always very, very peaceful and you can hear the birds and it just. It just allows my mind to be free to think. And when I would go to the beach, I wanted to go to the beach every day. I just love the ocean. What I would do is I would go into the ocean and I'd stay there for maybe 45 minutes, an hour or more than that. And I got caught up in listening to the to the waves, just the sound of the waves. There are there are cadences and there are crescendos and there are day crescendos and it just would make different ideas come into my mind that I could then put into place the next day. It just is very fruitful for me. That's the effect that Hawaii has on me and why I like to work in Hawaii. In fact, I've done several orchestral works all in Hawaii in the times that I've been there. Um, do you did you you mentioned the birds? And so did the birds come into your music also? I mean, do you get inspired by them? Well, there is actually a French composer who did put birds into his music. Olivier mess I am. He was a French composer and he tried to mimic the different bird calls. And that to me is not really possible that they have a music of their own. And every once in a while, it will trigger something different in me, a different thought in me. It's it's more the piece that I feel and then that the sounds of nature that I feel that give me ideas when I am in Hawaii. If you had to pick three of your compositions that you have found to resonate with you over the years and maybe perhaps not over the years, perhaps currently, could you name the pieces and talk a little bit about each piece and and what the music sounds like? And unfortunately, we don't have a piano. I wish I yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that would be even better. But yeah, your description would be great. Yeah. Well, the first piece that was performed by an orchestra, which was the Milwaukee Chamber Symphony Orchestra in Milwaukee at the Performing Arts Center was in three movements. And it was called on a country road. And they were written at different about different locations. The first location was a place called Waiting River in New York, which is on Long Island, which even though I was born in New York City in Brooklyn, I grew up really on the island in a place called very small community called Waiting River. And it was a piece that I wrote actually when I was in high school. And it is very peaceful and it's very happy. In fact, music is kind of an escape for me. And a lot of my music would probably be considered to be very upbeat and very joyous, both from a religious point of view from our religious music that I do and also from a secular point of view for the music that I've written for orchestra, not religious. The second movement was written at a very turbulent time period in US history. It was written in 1968, which was the time in UW Madison that there were the riots against the Vietnam War. And that's one of the most turbulent disinit paces of music that I've written. And the third movement is from St. Croix Falls. And that is in Minnesota. And it's a river and it's just very peaceful and kind of grand because I'm trying to depict musically the feeling of the awesome power of that water in the music that I'm writing. So that that piece was performed and it was well received. So that's one which has a big dent on me. And then a second piece of music that I wrote would be Times Four. And Times Four was written in a difficult period of my life. My sister, unfortunately, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And I ended up having to take care of her. She was older than me. And she's the one who told me how to play the piano. I had to take care of her, of course. So it was hard because the disease caused a change in her personality. And from being a very loving and warm and generous person, she became a very cold and angry person. And she would shout and scream at me. It was very hard, Carl, very, very hard. And I empathize with people who have loved ones who have Alzheimer's disease. And music was my escape. And so that piece, Times Four, was in four movements. It was morning, afternoon, evening and night. And, uh, morning, I wrote all, in fact, all of the movements that I wrote were fully orchestrated in Hawaii. However, I did write the movements for them for afternoon and for evening in, uh, New York, where I was taking care of her. But morning was written entirely in Hawaii and night was written entirely in Hawaii. And, uh, made a big dent on me. And that has been performed, actually. That was performed by a couple of different high school orchestras in Michigan and in North Carolina. And then also in Ohio. And then the last piece was the one that's going to be performed at Calvin University in, uh, Michigan, uh, April 22nd, I think, is the date of that concert. I know that I got to go to rehearsal next week because, uh, the new perk is called 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. And it's based on the poem by Wallace Stevens. And his poetry is very musical in nature. And I couldn't possibly set his text to a musical melody. So I'm the narrator and I read a stance out of the poem. And then I give my musical ideas about what this music inspires me to think of. Uh, Stevens felt that imagination was the most important human quality and which differentiates us truly from the rest of the animals that we can imagine things that are not and are yet to be and can become. And that really strikes a chord with me, no pun intended, Carl. And I... But Pineball take it. And I, uh, I set the 13 stanzas to music and I'm so looking forward to doing that with the orchestra. I said to the conductor who has been an advocate for my music, Josh Seller, I said he could either have me or if he could possibly get Patrick Stewart. I would prefer him to have Patrick Stewart, but he said I was cheaper. So I guess I'm doing it. Wow, big name. Let me let me ask you this because you mentioned your compositions in Hawaii. Yeah, are they affected besides, you know, the the waves and the melodic composition and perhaps crashing sounds of waves? Are they influenced at all by Hawaiian music and the melodies of Hawaiian music? And you mentioned, you know, the ukulele. Yeah, well, all of these things obviously have an influence, but I I have not been tempted to write in a Hawaiian style because that belongs to the people of Hawaii. And I have to sift things through my lens, through my own background and through my understanding. And I enjoy listening very much to Hawaiian music. I love music. I'm taking an anthropology course actually right now. And it's about Native Americans and the music that they have, which was shunned actually in the beginning by the Europeans and is now being recognized by Americans as having such worth. I think that we have to recognize all the different gifts that people have to offer. So, no, I have not tried to that if the influence has been there, it's subtle and it's not conscious on my part. But maybe there is a little bit of Hawaiian influence in the music that I've written to. That's great. Well, you know, that's wonderful. And it's wonderful that you come here and compose. You know, you had mentioned that this piece you're going to, that the conductor was the person who was a big supporter of yours. Is that how your music gets performed? Does a conductor find out about it or how is your music disseminated? Because that's kind of an interesting question for anyone who is going to compose music. Yeah, well, it helps to go to a famous school. It would have helped if I had gone to Juilliard School of Music, because then that leads to ends where you get to meet different people. So in the music that I have done, I've kind of been in the hands of the people who have been around me. And the Josh Teller was one of them. He taught at the high school where I was working and he became interested in the music that I had written. And I've done with so many musicians over the years that I was working at church in terms of instrumentalists and especially with singers. But these are not people who are really in positions to promote my music elsewhere. So I guess it's a matter of contacting people or getting your music published in that manner. And I've written a lot of music and dedicated it to different people. And now I think some people are beginning to get back to me and saying they would like to hear more. For example, let me ask you for a specific example for the Milwaukee Chamber Group. Yes, how did that come about? Well, that came about because we were regular attendees at the at the Concert Series. And my wife, Cheryl, wrote down on one of these things that they gave asking for recommendations for pieces that they could play in the future. She said, why don't you play the works of my husband? And so the actually one of the directors contacted me and said, could you please submit some music to us? And I did and it was performed. Well, that's, you know, so, you know, the answer there is your wonderful wife promoted you. There you go. Yeah. Now, I know you have children and so dear children also, are they musicians also? And have they copied dad? No, the oldest one has that. But, you know, that's interesting. You should say that, Carl, because after all these years, when he kind of didn't do anything with the piano, he had learned to play the piano. He's now taken it up again. It's so important. The music is just, it's so much a part of our lives, really. That leads me to another thing. When I was teaching European history, I used to ask in the beginning of the question, what are the five most important things that Europeans did for the world? And then I would follow that up with it. What are the five worst things that the Europeans did for the world? And one of the things that was never mentioned, really, on best things was music. They would talk about medicine and they would talk about science. And yet music so much touches our lives on a daily basis. I think it's just because it's so much a part of us. We don't think about really where it came from. Anyway, I think you were asking me a different question. Carl, what is the question that you were asking me? Well, I was I was asking about your son's about what music Michael Michael plays the guitar and he plays the guitar on a daily basis. He did learn how to play the piano, but he has really followed up with the guitar as his primary instrument. Well, we are running out of time and and rich, I want to thank you for your wonderful discussion of what it means to be a composer. And of course, our last queen was a composer, Lillio Colani. And so you fit into a mold that is well represented here in Hawaii. And well, and you mentioned European history and history in general. And of course, you follow in that great tradition of composers. I'm going to leave the last words to you. If there's any brief words of advice that you would give, especially young people, if they want to compose music, what would that be? Stick to it. Keep a musical diary, write every day. It's important that you keep writing every day and don't let anybody discourage you. If you have a love for it, just keep on plug it away. Well, there it is. And, you know, we call him the magical composer from Wisconsin, a rich Smith and a Huey Ho and a Loha to you, Richard Smith. We want to announce that Think Tech Hawaii is moving into a new phase and will not be producing regular talk shows after April 30th. We will retain our website and YouTube channel and will accept new content on an ad hoc basis. We are also developing a legacy archive program to provide continuing public access to our content. If you can help us cover the costs of the transition and the development of our legacy archive program, please make a donation on thinktechaway.com. Thanks so much. Aloha.