Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexandria Smith.
Alexandria, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was raised the super rural town of Bent Mountain, VA. Yes, it does exist! There wasn’t too much music in my household, but I remember loving a mixtape my mom played in that car that included songs by the Counting Crows, James Taylor, the Cranberries, No Doubt, Johnny Cash, and the Fugees. I was also obsessed with dinosaurs and watched the Rite of Spring part of Fantasia over and over again.
I started playing the trumpet when I was around 12 years old. When I started taking it seriously, it became something that I excelled at rapid pace. Mic Gillette, one of the trumpet players in the Tower of Power, would come to Roanoke, VA every year to play with one of the local bands and teach some lessons. After seeing what he did and playing with him on stage, I knew that I wanted to keep on doing that. At the same time, I loved to compose and often wrote pieces for chamber ensembles – woodwind quintet, brass quintet, trumpet and guitar, etc. I learned how to read different clefs and write for other instruments by studying orchestral scores and listening to recordings; I also loved the blues, country, and rock music and would incorporate that in my music. Many genres of music and music making practices interested me, so I wanted to be versatile. However, I was continually discouraged from composing/improvising and was told by various people that I admired that I had to focus on one thing in order to succeed, so I pursued orchestral trumpet.
When I turned 19, I moved to New York City to study orchestral trumpet performance at Mannes the New School for Music on a scholarship, but gradually found out that the performing as an orchestral trumpet player didn’t speak to me. There were concerts every night in NYC and most of the ones that I was interested in didn’t take place in the large concert halls. This really confused me, but also drew me closer to music that could combine all of the ways of music making that I was interested. So, I signed up for a series of classes at the New School that were curated by John Zorn. Artists performing at the Stone (a venue in NYC) would perform with the students, lecture about their work, talk about their careers/how to make it in the quickly evolving music industry, and show us what they were listening to. That along with hearing Zorn’s album “Naked City” for the first time changed my life, that album mixed so many different types of music in really interesting ways.
At the same time, I was making my own electronic music, composing again, and apprenticing as a classical recording engineer. Composing electronic music and making recordings made me want to add more interactive elements to performance, so I learned how to program using Arduino, OpenFrameworks, and make videos in Adobe Premiere and develop some physical computing/Internet of Things skills. To me, the texture of sound is also a visual and affective experience; I want my work to say that.
Fast forward a few years later to now, and I would have to say that I am very happy with what I am doing. These explorations, while confusing and difficult at times, have taught me a lot about myself and what making art means to me. I get to perform and work with incredible artists and work in all of the disciplines that interest me. The whole “jack of all trades, master of none” phrase always turned me off. My version of an artistic life involved much more than playing the trumpet all day, so now I have combined everything I learned along the way into an artistic practice that is very meaningful to me.
Has it been a smooth road?
I feel like nothing is ever smooth with music!! I desperately wanted to leave VA, and would do anything to get out. There were things about where I came from that I resented, and it made me want to disassociate with it completely; however, as I get older, I have a lot more curiosity about where I am from and want to know more about the local music of the New River Valley. There were many members of my family struggling with addiction and things were sometimes unstable.
Music gave me the escape that I needed. I would spend hours arranging music, composing my own music, and trying to get better at the trumpet. Moving to NYC was a struggle at first – I was told by one of my teachers that I had to lose my accent or no one would take me seriously; not many people that I went to school with left Virginia, and I didn’t have many role models that I could relate to at the time. The artistic disciplines that I practice are incredibly male dominated, what it means and how to be a female-identifying artist in these areas has been a journey that I am still navigating. This has led to me wanting to work with biofeedback as an interfacing tool for musicians, and build sensors and performance environments where female-identifying artists can express what is happening inside their bodies on stage instead of having to revert to the masculinist methods of performance that we have been taught throughout the years.
I feel so fortunate to have gotten the educational opportunities that I have been given, my mom and step-dad didn’t graduate from college and I will be the first person in my entire family to earn a Ph.D.! I guess I can call this a challenge because I had to figure out what to do and occasionally have to explain to various family members why I am still in school, but I know that my family is proud and that I have been lucky to receive the education that I have gotten.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I am a trumpeter, composer/multimedia artist, and recording/mix engineer. My current artistic interest is working with biofeedback as an interfacing tool for interactive electronic music, visuals, and body awareness during live performance. I am especially interested in working with female-identifying musicians and building them performance systems where they can work with what is going on inside their body. While there is more representation of female-identifying performers on historically male dominated instruments in the western classical tradition, many of us had to go through a training that was catered to male bodies. My instruments and performance concepts are created and inspired by conversations with female-identifying artists that inspire me; I want to make things for them to be able to work with their bodies in a way that is empowering instead of having to mold themselves to an ‘ideal’ that has been constructed by a masculinist culture. These aren’t necessarily ‘performance enhancement tools’, but a way to work with this information and make art with it. E.g. interactive visuals, making music with your body, and/or observing what is going on in the present.
Playing the trumpet has been my vehicle to music for many years. I enjoy being able to play a variety of genres from playing on Billy Martin’s (drummer for Medeski Martin and Wood) new record Guilty, to performing trumpet/electronics improvisations in the Luminous Tubes concert @ the FONT Festival in New York City to curating a week at the Stone in NYC to performing with the amazing Ivan Trujillo in the VI SEMANA INTERNACIONAL DE IMPROVISACIÓN in Ensenada, Baja California to playing classical chamber music to difficult solo trumpet music to collaborating with electronic music artists to performing at art gallery openings to tracking trumpet lines remotely for various bands all across the United States. I love playing music with artists that love what they do!
As a tracking engineer, I, like many others, love finding different ways to mike acoustic instruments. Being able to work with my incredible colleagues at UCSD has been such a treat; recording experimental music gives you a lot of room to try many different methods to achieve the right sound/emphasize certain timbres. As a mix engineer, I love being able to orchestrate a mix in a way that makes people excited. I have a strange obsession with repairing audio material that has been considered unusable for various reasons work, and applying mixing methods that get used in other music to experimental classical music. I am currently doing work for artists all over the world.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
San Diego has been an amazing place to be after living in NYC for six years. The beaches, the desert, and various communities continuously inspire me and remind me how lucky I am to be here. San Diego has so many amazing performance communities, e.g. The FRONT Arte Cultura in San Yisidro to Bread, Salt in Barrio Logan, the Casbah, UCSD, and so many more. The ability to collaborate with artists in Baja California is also very special.
My advice for musicians just starting out here is to support your local communities – go to Mexico and see performances, check out performances that are happening in galleries, music venues that book artists you are interested in, and to embrace many different artistic communities. While it is a very different artistic scene than I experienced in New York, San Diego has so many talented people and interesting performance venues to do your own thing.
Contact Info:
- Website: alexandriarsmith.com
- Instagram: alexandriahbic
- Facebook: facebook.com/alexandria.smith.946
Image Credit:
Tiange Zhou, Jessica Flores, Emmalie Tello, and Jeff Kaiser
Suggest a story: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
