An accomplished performer and devoted teacher, Smith is a UAB alumnus, graduate of the Eastman School of Music and associate professor of piano at Utah State University.Pianist Cahill Smith will perform Sunday, Sept. 22, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham as part of the UAB Piano Series.
The UAB Piano Series brings the world’s finest pianists to Birmingham. The series, presented by the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music, is directed by Distinguished Professor of Piano and Artist-in-Residence Yakov Kasman, DMA, a Van Cliburn medalist.
Smith will perform a program of Rachmaninoff and Medtner at 4 p.m., in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, Reynolds-Kirschbaum Recital Hall, 1200 10th Ave. South.
Tickets are $15, $5 for students through grade 12 and UAB employees; free to UAB students. Call 205-975-2787 for tickets or visit AlysStephens.org.
Originally from Tallassee, Alabama, Smith is an accomplished performer and devoted teacher. A UAB alumnus, he completed his bachelor’s degree with Kasman in 2008. In 2019, Smith joined the faculty of Utah State University’s Caine College of the Arts, where he is associate professor of piano.
Actively concertizing as a soloist and chamber musician, Smith has performed in major venues in the United States and abroad, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Royal Dublin Society’s Concert Hall and Buffalo’s Kleinhan’s Music Hall. He has been featured as a concerto soloist with the National Ukrainian Symphony Orchestra in Kyiv, the Mongolian Symphony Orchestra in Hohhot, China, the Eastman Philharmonia, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, the Chattanooga Symphony, the Butler Symphony Orchestra, the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and others.
Smith gave his first recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2013 with a program dedicated entirely to works of Russian composer Nikolai Medtner. Smith first played Medtner in Kasman’s piano studio at UAB. In a review of his 2015 solo recital in the same venue, New York Concert Review wrote, “in the piano music of Nikolai Medtner […], Mr. Smith was in his element, revealing every twist and turn, every poignant repeat of the cyclic themes, with beautiful shimmering colors I haven’t heard since Gilels played the Sonata reminiscenza in Carnegie Hall in 1980.” Smith has given recitals and lectures on Medtner’s music at Yale University, the International Medtner Festival in London and others.
In January 2019, Smith’s debut album “Medtner: Forgotten Melodies” was featured as Classical Radio Boston’s “CD of the Week” for its “irresistible lyricism” and “a palpable sense of love a real affinity for the directness and honesty in Medtner’s music, which goes straight to the heart.”
At Utah State University he is co-coordinator of the piano program, director of Graduate Studies in Music, director of the Wassermann Piano Series, and director of the USU Summer Piano Festival, an intensive week of public concerts and an intensive training program for high school pianists. Smith is a faculty adviser for USU’s nationally recognized Youth Conservatory, which offers affordable piano lessons and group classes to around 200 pre-college students in the community. He also is an adviser for the Music Teachers National Association Collegiate Chapter at USU, which was named National Collegiate Chapter of the Year from MTNA in 2022. Smith was named Teacher of the Year in 2023, Undergraduate Mentor of the Year in 2023 and Graduate Mentor of the Year in 2021.
Smith is on the faculty of the Gifted Music School in Salt Lake City, and previously served on the faculty of Lee University from 2014-2020, where he directed the International Piano Festival and Competition.
Smith completed his master’s degree at the University of Michigan with Arthur Greene and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music, where he was the teaching assistant to Natalya Antonova. At Eastman, Smith was the inaugural recipient of the Douglas Lowry Award for Excellence in degree recital performance, won the Eastman Concerto Competition, received honors in chamber music and was awarded the Prize for Excellence in Teaching.