Among the composers of our time, Gabriella Smith is one of those special musical voices, whose intricate sounding realms bear unusual connectivity and immersive intensity. Still in her early thirties, Gabriella’s multi-faceted oeuvre builds up on commissions from ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and the Kronos Quartet. Born in Berkeley, California and currently based in Seattle, her music is very much connected to the West Coast and its natural habitat, recalling Gabriella’s joyful experiences on various research and environmental restoration projects.
“California is the source of a lot of my music because that’s such a part of who I am. My first professional orchestral commission, Tumblebird Contrails was written for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, which is in Santa Cruz. I knew immediately from there that I wanted to write something about the California coast, because I felt that it was something that people would connect to there. But I also wanted to write about a place that was closer to me personally: Point Reyes, where I had spent so much time growing up because I volunteered on the songbird research project there.
When I went to Santa Cruz for the rehearsals and performance, I actually biked there from San Francisco, which is about eighty miles. It took me eight hours with breaks. It was a beautiful day. I biked down Highway 1 on a classic, foggy Bay Area morning that burned off and then it was gloriously sunny”, the composer recalls in our chat over Zoom.
Since the 2014 world premiere of Tumblebird Contrails by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop, Gabriella’s list of works has expanded to include orchestral scores and concerti, works for string quartet and other chamber ensembles, solo pieces and vocal music, incorporating – in some cases – notable parts for electronics. Keeping up with the California connection, one of her signature works, Lost Coast, was inspired by a five-day solo backpacking trip the composer took on the Lost Coast Trail, a remote section of the Northern California coastline. The music exists in several versions, including an album-length studio rendition for cello and electronic soundtrack as well as a full-scale concerto with orchestra.
“I wrote the first version of Lost Coast a long time ago – in 2014 – for the cellist Gariel Cabezas and electronics. Then it was turned into a concerto for him less than a year later, but after that it went through many iterations until it became the concerto version that it is now. It came directly out of wanting to write about this other place in California that felt really special to me.”
According to the composer’s note for the Los Angeles Philharmonic premiere of the 2023 version of Lost Coast for cello and orchestra, the music is “a raw emotional expression of the grief, loss, rage, and fear experienced as a result of climate change – as well as the joy, beauty, and wonder I have felt in the world’s last wild places and the joy and hope in getting to work on climate solutions.”
Both Lost Coast and her other recent concertante score, Breathing Forests (2021) for organ and orchestra – written for the organist James McVinnie and reflecting the complex relationship between humans, forests, climate change, and fire – have their musical roots in the personalities of their designated soloists.
“For me it provides so much inspiration to work with a specific person. I always like to think about my music as being for a person rather than an instrument. It’s for a person who happens to play that instrument rather than the instrument. And really, both of these pieces were driven by not wanting to write a cello concerto or an organ concerto but by wanting to write for specifically that person.
Gabe and I met when he was 16 and I was 17, on our first day of Curtis, and we’ve been friends ever since. We’ve really grown up together musically and worked together so many times that it just felt so natural to write a concerto for him. I think it really allowed me to do things that I couldn’t do for anybody else. I wrote the first version of Lost Coast in 2014. So, we’ve been working – not just together in general – but on this piece even for almost ten years, and the music is really driven by him. Also, there’s the fact that there are some parts that are improvised, so he’s almost my co-composer in in some places; especially the parts that came out of the album version that we made in Iceland in 2019, where we really were treating it more like a band, alongside the parts that came out of the duo version that we do together, where we are, basically, a band. So, he’s really a part of the composition process of that piece.”
Regarding Breathing Forests, the composer says she had no particular attraction to the organ before meeting James McVinnie in rehearsals in Los Angeles in January 2019.
“I did not set out to write an organ concerto. Jamie and I met because of Tumblebird Contrails, when John Adams did it at Disney Hall, on a concert with Grand Pianola Music and also the premiere of Philip Glass Symphony No. 12. That was my first LA Phil concert, and Jamie was playing the featured organ part in the symphony. That’s how we met, but we also discovered that we had mutual friends. So, we had champagne after the concert, which ended in him giving me a tour of the organ, which was just really fun and got me thinking about it.
Then somehow he and John were talking and that led to them asking me if I wanted to write something. I had already been talking with LA Phil about writing something, but we hadn’t decided what, and then this just felt right because I liked Jamie and it felt like something that would get me out of my comfort zone. That’s something that I always look for when I think about writing a new piece of music: something I’ve never done before, something that feels like a risk. I always try to take risks in every piece. There are so many “problems” with the organ for me specifically. A lot of what makes my music sound like my music is extended techniques and less usual ways of playing the instruments: very gradual changes in dynamics and timbre. And the organ cannot do any of those, which is what made me intrigued to write for it. Because then who am I if I can’t do any of those things? I think the piece still turned out sounding very much like me. Of course, they do all of those things in the orchestra, which helps. But it was a really interesting challenge that I enjoyed.”
As a composer in whose music organic transitions between various extended techniques are of great importance, Gabriella’s working methods include substantial amounts of improvisation and hands-on experimentation, fine-tuned with creative takes on mock-up recordings on Ableton digital audio workstation.
“Normally, I try to make notation the very last stage of the process. I have a structure in mind first, always, because I want to know where I’m starting and where I’m going, at least very generally. But then, within that, I’ll be doing a lot of improvising and then recording myself. For orchestral works, I’ll record myself doing a lot of the string parts on violin, which I started doing because there aren’t sample libraries for these kinds of extended techniques available.
In school, the way you’re taught how hear what a score is going to sound like is by listening to so much repertoire and going to concerts – until it becomes a part of you. But when you’re dealing with extended techniques, there often isn’t enough repertoire to do that. There’s some, but, in my case, those techniques were really coming from playing on the instrument, so I realized I can just record myself doing them.
I started doing that around a little over ten years ago. Tumblebird Contrails was the first full orchestra piece that I wrote using this process where I recorded myself doing all the string techniques. Then for the winds and brass, since I don’t have any access to or ability on those instruments, I would sing those parts. Again, it’s approximate, and you have to use your imagination, but it really helped me connect tangibly with the music, more so than just trying to imagine it.
For the percussion, I’d go into the kitchen, get whatever pots and pans I could find and bang on them and record that. So, I would assemble the piece in layers like that, section by section. I would improvise a layer, move things around, re-improvise and build everything that way until I was able to hear this very different version of the piece. I loved the feeling of play that was part of that process rather than just being so serious and sitting down and writing a masterpiece. It was more about enjoying and having fun making sounds on my instrument.
And because it worked with Tumblebird, then I started doing it for all of my pieces, and that’s still mostly how I work today, although I’ve had some challenges doing that along the way. Especially with Lost Coast, I discovered that it doesn’t always work, because things that sound good close-miked while listening to a click-track, don’t always sound good in an orchestra because groove is more challenging with that many people. Also, not everything that sounds good when sung, sound good on wind and brass instruments and vice versa.
Carrot Revolution was the second or third piece that I wrote this way, and even what you can do with a string quartet doesn’t always work for an orchestra. In a string quartet, it’s only four people, so they can play together so much more accurately. And they also have more rehearsal time, usually. So, I had to learn all of that through doing those pieces. It was a gradual process of learning that, but that’s how the album of Lost Coast happened; because I made all those mistakes in the initial version that we then decided to embrace on the album. And then, again, I learned from that when I turned it into the concerto format.”
When it comes to notation, especially in context of orchestral performances, clarity and practicability are of paramount importance, when pieces are often put together within tight rehearsal schedules. In Gabriella’s case, feedback from orchestral musicians such as those of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who gave the world premiere performances of the concerto version of Lost Coast under their Music Director Gustavo Dudamel last May, has been enthusiastically positive.
“This makes me so glad. It’s always hard to know because there’s no way of notating all this stuff. But then again, the same thing is true of Beethoven. We don’t know how to play Beethoven just from looking at the music. We only know because there’s centuries of performance practice. So, it’s just a hurdle that we have to get over with new music.
I wish I could just be there and just show people these things. Recently, I have been doing extended technique demos on my violin in person, which has helped a lot. I did that with Breathing Forests in San Francisco and with Tumblebird Contrails at the Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm, and it was really helpful. But when I’m not there myself, I have QR codes in the score that the musicians can scan and then go and watch me doing the demos. It’s better than nothing but of course, being there in person also helps, I think.”
In her program notes and pre-concert talks, in conjunction with the music itself, climate solutions are often discussed enthusiastically by the composer, including her spoken introduction at the Nobel Prize Concert with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen in December.
“I’ve heard the phrase “art about raising awareness for the climate crisis” so much that it is almost sadly comedic at this point, because I think people are aware. The people who come to my concerts are not climate deniers. People already know that the climate crisis is real and that it’s dire. They just don’t know what to do. They don’t know that it’s possible to do anything, or that it’s possible for it to be fun. So many people are just in this hole of doomism, because that’s such a part of our culture. They feel so much despair, I think. Those are the types of conversations I’ve had with people. It’s not about people who refuse to believe that it’s real, but people who are really concerned but think that maybe there isn’t anything that we can do, and maybe it’s too late. So, I started realizing that if I want to make an impact, this is really the direction that I have to focus on. To make an impact is not about convincing people that it’s real, but convincing people that climate solutions can be a part of our lives, our daily lives, our culture. And it can be fun! It’s joyful to be part of a community that’s doing this.”
To be premiered this Saturday at Bing Concert Hall, Stanford, California by the Kronos Quartet, Gabriella’s latest work, Keep Going (2023) for amplified string quartet and electronics combines musical narratives with those by people working in various fields of climate solutions. Written in celebration of the legendary ensemble’s 50th anniversary season, the 35-minute score focuses on the individuals and communities who dedicate their lives to climate solutions in the most joyful ways imaginable.
“This is one of the projects that I’m most excited about right now! I wrote the first movement intentionally as a standalone thing and they’ve been playing it on its own since the beginning of this season. The whole piece is in five movements for string quartet plus prerecorded track that includes voices of people that I’ve been interviewing who are working on climate solutions in all different fields all over the world. And that’s been one of the most joyful, interesting things I’ve ever been a part of, because it really has made me feel like I’m part of this global climate community of people who are not giving up and who are working on this and who are completely devoted to it.
That alone, even without the piece itself, just all these conversations have been amazing. It starts out with two people in the first movement who I’ve actually worked on ecosystem restorations with in Seattle, and then the rest expands outward. The next voice you hear is a woman who is a solar shepherd. She grazes her sheep on solar farms using regenerative farming practices. I love that one because so many people think that the downside of solar energy is that you have to just use these vast swaths of land for nothing else other than solar panels, and that just doesn’t have to be true. You can actually have vibrant, functioning ecosystems that are happening under the solar panels. Another person I interviewed is growing food under solar panels in Colorado.
And then there’s someone working on regenerative ocean farming, someone working to map the waterways of Karachi, Pakistan to reduce flooding there, which is a huge infrastructural problem. People working on sustainable architecture, electrifying things, bicycle infrastructure, environmental justice – I mean, you can really find it a climate tie into every field, which, I think, is so important for people to realize, because you can make any job a climate job. You don’t have to change your field. You can do the things you already love doing and are good at. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do with my job as a composer. It’s not that I’m changing what I do. I’m just trying to make what I already do a climate job.
So, I’m really excited about this piece because, I think, it helps people see the climate movement and the climate crisis in a different way. The last movement of that piece is only people talking about what they love about their work. And that was so much fun to write! I just smiled every time I sat down to work on it.”
Looking ahead, the composer’s forthcoming musical projects involve commissions from the San Francisco Symphony and yMusic, a New York-based sextet featuring Alex Sopp, flute, Mark Dover, clarinet, CJ Camerieri, trumpet/horn, Rob Moose, violin, Nadia Sirota, viola and Gabriel Cabezas, cello.
“I’ve worked with the members of yMusic many times before and they’re friends of mine. I’m writing an album-length piece for them, featuring underwater recordings. I’ve been making those over the last ten years, almost, with my hydrophone. Probably the best ones I’ve gotten have been in French Polynesia. I was visiting some family there and I just would go out on this paddle board and drop the hydrophone into the water. On the recordings, you can hear the crackling sounds of shrimps or the parrotfish eating the algae off the coral, alongside the various grunting sounds that fish make.
But then I’m also getting recordings from other people for that. I’m in the process of doing that right now just because I’m not a professional field recordist and I don’t have access to all the equipment or diversity of ecosystems that I would like to have in the piece. I haven’t started the music for it yet, since I’m just in the process of getting recordings and going through my own recordings now.
And then I’m also writing a piece San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen, also for the 24/25 season. I’m so very excited about that!”
© Jari Kallio
AIM - Adventures in Music 
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