Gregory E. Smith

Gregory E. Smith, a member of the New England Conservatory faculty since 1978, retired from the College faculty at the end of the 2014/2015 academic year, and taught Continuing Education classes at NEC during the year following.

Smith wrote his doctoral thesis on improvisation in the music of jazz pianist Bill Evans. His master’s thesis, written under the direction of Paul Pisk, was on vocal music of Johannes Brahms. He has contributed articles to The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, World of Music, and Sonus, read papers at national meetings of the American Musicological Society, and has given preconcert lectures on Beethoven and Schubert for the WBUR–Bank of Boston Celebrity Series at Symphony Hall.

B.M., St. Louis Institute of Music; M.A., Washington University; Ph.D. in musicology, Harvard University. Piano with Jules Gentil of the École Normale de Musique de Paris; harmony and counterpoint with Hermann Schäfer of the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Heidelberg-Mannheim; Whiting Fellow in the Humanities.