Jeffrey Dennis Smith is a composer, percussionist and conductor focusing primarily on music for the stage: opera, musical theater and dance.  As a Resident Artist with American Lyric Theater he’s collaborating with librettist David Johnston on a new opera Why Is Eartha Kitt Trying To Kill Me? A Love Story.  Other recent projects include music for Bowes Academy, a short film by director Greg Emetaz and MinorApocalypse Films, and a duo marimba piece written for the Iowa/Hungary Percussion Project.  Jeffrey is also developing the musical Lightning Man with Shoshana Greenberg (lyricist) and Maggie-Kate Coleman (bookwriter).  It received a developmental production at Tisch School of the Arts and was presented as part of the ANT Fest 2011 at Ars Nova. 

Jeffrey’s songs have been performed at NAMT New Works Summit, Laurie Beechman Theater, Project Footlight at Dixon Place, NEO5 at the York Theatre, Goodspeed, and the Daniel Arts Center at Simon’s Rock.  His dance scores have been heard at the Cool New York 2009 and 2010 Dance Festivals, the 2009 DanceNOW [NYC] Festival, Joyce Soho, Dance Theatre Workshop and Duo Theater.  Jeffrey’s music for film includes an animation by Tarik Cherkaoui that was presented at the 2010 Williamsburg International Film Festival and the Electric Pear Production’s Synthesia 2010 at The Wild Project.  He wrote incidental music and songs for Lucilla’s Story: A Play for Gabriel Mistral that was produced at the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival.  His piece Tiger Dance for marimba soloist and percussion ensemble was performed at the 2011 Percussive Arts Society International Convention. 

As a percussionist, Jeffrey performed with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, New Hampshire Music Festival, Rockford Symphony Orchestra, Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra, Dubuque Symphony Orchestra, and the performance group Sonic Inertia.  He was the first place winner of the 1996 Young Artist Competition of the Minnesota Orchestra.  Jeffrey was a Visiting Guest Artist in percussion at the University of Northern Iowa in the fall of 2001, and he’s a graduate of the Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program (MFA), Northwestern University (MM) and the University of Northern Iowa (BM). He studied at the European American Musical Alliance in Paris during the summer of 2013.