On a gloomy morning in an uncertain world, finding some measure of joyous reassurance in the ecstatic whoops and whorls of Gabriella Smith's 'Carrot Revolution,' played emphatically by @aizuriquartet. https://t.co/tHyqNOJNx3 via @YouTube

— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) January 3, 2020

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Gabriella Smith is a composer other composers evidently like to recommend, to their listeners and to one another. At some point last year, when I was going through some pretty elaborate motions to plan the programming for an entire orchestral season – spurred by an online challenge, and still unfinished – I contacted Gabriel Kahane to ask a few questions about one of his compositions. When I told him why I was inquiring, he insisted that I needed to hear Smith's orchestral piece Tumblebird Contrails right away.

Likewise, when the composer Steve Reich was invited to curate a "Nightcap" concert for the New York Philharmonic in December, he included a piece by Gabriella Smith, whose music he had come to know after John Adams had recommended Reich check her out. Adams had himself included Smith's string quartet Carrot Revolution on his own "Nightcap" program in March; Reich took to it immediately, he told "Nightcap" host Nadia Sirota last month, after picking out a quotation from Viderunt omnes by Pérotin, a 12th-century French composer long hailed by Reich as a decisive influence.

Lost Coast, the piece included on Reich's program, was derived from a cello concerto of the same title, which Smith had composed in 2015 for Gabriel Cabezas and the New York Youth Symphony. The new piece wasn't a reduction, exactly, but rather a supremely clever reworking for solo cellist with recorded accompaniment: all the remaining string parts, played by Cabezas, plus the wind and brass parts sung by Smith. The piece, and its performance, were effective and beautiful.

Lost Coast, it turns out, is part of a recording Cabezas is making with Sirota (his bandmate in yMusic), Valgeir Sigurðsson, and Francesco Fabris for the Icelandic label Bedroom Community. This is excellent news, not least because – despite her popularity among fellow composers, and musicians and listeners, too – Gabriella Smith is sorely underrepresented in the recording catalog. Having spent the first half of my today trawling the internet for more of her pieces to listen to – as Reich urged everyone in attendance at his concert (including Josh Groban and Solange Knowles) to do – I found just five pieces presently available on commercially released recordings:

• Spring/Neap (2012), on the PRISM Quartet album The Curtis Project (XAS Records)
• Carrot Revolution (2015), on the Aizuri Quartet album Blueprinting (New Amsterdam)
• Huascarán (2016), on the Latitude 49 album Curious Minds (self-released)
• Panitao (2016), on the Bang on a Can All-Stars album More Field Recordings (Cantaloupe Music)
• Loop the Fractal Hold of Rain (2017), on the Duo Noire album Night Triptych (New Focus)

Thankfully, there's plenty more out there to hear on YouTube and SoundCloud. Here some choice examples:

• Quintet for String Quartet and Double Bass (2009), presented by Pacific Musical Society (YouTube)
• Kisiabaton (2010), performed by Ensemble39 (SoundCloud)
• Reflection Nebulae (2011), performed by Friction Quartet (YouTube)
• Brandenberg Interstices (2012), presented by the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (SoundCloud)
• the heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit (2013), performed by Jordan Dodson (SoundCloud)
• Inyo (2013), performed by Friction Quartet (YouTube)
• Number Nine (2013), performed by Latitude 49 (YouTube), and by New Music Detroit (YouTube)
• Field Guide (2017), excerpt performed by unidentified orchestra (SoundCloud)
• Hexacorallia (2019), performed by Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra (YouTube)

One reason Gabriella Smith is on my mind is because the Omer Quartet, performing at Merkin Hall on January 7 at 2pm as part of the long-running "Tuesday Matinées" series, will play her newest string-quartet piece, Porcupine Wash. The group presented the work's world premiere last June at the Caramoor Festival, where it's currently in residence. Just before that concert, the Omers stopped into WQXR for a live broadcast performance of one movement, "Barrel Cactus," where application of pencils and paper clips render the group's sound enticingly alien. (In the recorded show, the movement starts at the 43-minute mark.) Presumably, the Merkin concert is the New York City premiere for the rest of the piece.

Look ahead in the "Tuesday Matinées" schedule, by the way, and you're bound to notice that Gabriel Cabezas is presenting a concert in the series on May 12, and Gabriella Smith is on his agenda—looks like New Yorkers have another chance to hear Lost Coast coming right up. Before that, Carlos Kalmar will conduct the Oregon Symphony in a program featuring a commissioned premiere by Smith on February 7 in Salem, and February 8-10 in Portland.

Back in New York City, the Aizuri Quartet will include Carrot Revolution on its Sunday Morning Coffee Concerts program at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, on April 26 at 11am. And the pianist/composer Timo Andres, in a recital at Zankel Hall on April 29 at 7:30pm, presents a Carnegie Hall-commissioned world premiere by Smith as part of his lively, alluring program.