James Austin Smith
oboe

An active chamber musician, new music proponent and orchestral oboist, James Austin Smith is a member of New York-based Sospiro Winds and a busy performer in and around New York.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Smith enjoys a busy concert schedule around the United States with Sospiro Winds. Silver Medal winners at the 2007 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the wind quintet will make its Carnegie Hall debut this season and has been invited to travel to Osaka, Japan to compete in the Osaka Chamber Music Competition. Mr. Smith performs frequently as a chamber musician at Yale and will attend the Marlboro Music Festival this summer.

An avid interpreter of new music, Mr. Smith has worked extensively with Pierre Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy and will perform this season in New York at the Juilliard School under Mr. Boulez's direction. Mr. Smith will return to Lucerne this summer. Mr. Smith has premiered a number of new compositions around the country and enjoys working closely with composers at the Yale School of Music. As an orchestral musician, Mr. Smith has performed in the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra and at the Spoleto Festival USA.

Mr. Smith is currently completing his Master of Music degree at the Yale School of Music where he studies with Stephen Taylor. He completed both his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music at Northwestern University in 2005 as a student of Ray Still. Both degrees were awarded with honors. He spent the following year as a Fulbright Scholar in Leipzig, Germany, where he studied with Professor Christian Wetzel at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy." While studying in Leipzig, Mr. Smith co-directed a concert of German and American musicians and performed as a guest recitalist at the residence of the American General Consul to Leipzig. Mr. Smith was a pre-college student of Humbert Lucarelli at the Hartt School in Hartford and has also worked extensively with Hansjšrg Schellenberger.

New York born and Connecticut rasised, Mr. Smith is the son of musician parents and the eldest of four boys. When neither practicing nor making reeds, Mr. Smith enjoys a good jog, learning languages, and discovering the friendlier sides of New Haven.