Freeport composer Smith gets tribute in Manhattan

Throughout his decades-long career in music, Hale Smith composed an oeuvre rich in scope, ranging freely from classical to jazz and other idioms.

Works by the Freeport musician were performed during his lifetime by such prominent orchestras as the New York Philharmonic and jazz standouts like Dizzy Gillespie.

Monday night, in a posthumous tribute, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Manhattan will present music composed by Smith, who died in November at 84.

Smith's wife, Juanita, 82, selected music for the program and invited Smith's former students and colleagues to perform.

Violinist Sanford Allen, 71, a friend and collaborator of Smith's since the 1950s and the first African-American member of the New York Philharmonic, said that while Smith was outspoken about his theories on music and life, "he was a man who was open to other points of view."

Smith even acknowledged preferring Allen's approach to one of Smith's own compositions, "Epicedial Variations." Allen, music director of the Leaf Peeper concert series in Columbia County, N.Y., is to perform the piece Monday night.

Besides composing, Smith was a performer, arranger and educator, teaching at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University and the University of Connecticut in Storrs before retiring from there in 1984.

Kenneth Adams, 64, chairman of the performing and fine arts department at CUNY York College in Queens, called Smith a mentor and "a complete musician" who defied being pigeonholed.

"He didn't want to be judged as a black composer, but rather as an American composer," Adams said. "There's no reason why he should be a black composer and Aaron Copland be an American composer. Last time I checked, they're both American."

The program starts at 7 p.m.