An international singer and composer whose work spans genres and traditions.
Project Jumpstart’s theme for the month of April is “Staying Creative,” and Jacobs alumna Moira Smiley, with her eclectic artistic voice, is the perfect embodiment of that theme. She’s sung in arenas, cathedrals, kitchens, back porches, sound stages, and on glaciers, and has performed with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Tune-Yards, Tim O’Brien, Eric Whitacre, Los Angeles Master Chorale, New World Symphony, Solas, and The Lyris String Quartet. As a composer, Moira’s original compositions, choral arrangements, and folk arrangements are being sung by millions of voices around the world today. Read on for more about how she found her unique musical path, why trust plays a crucial role in her definition of success, and where she turns to for inspiration.
Please join us for an Innovation Roundtable Discussion with Moira Smiley: Friday, May 1 | 12-1pm: Zoom Connect to participate (registration required) or Facebook Live to watch.
Singer/composer powerhouse Moira Smiley travels the world creating new works for voices and accompanying her performances with her banjo, accordion, piano, and percussive movement. Her recordings feature spare, vocally-driven collections of warped traditional songs and original polyphony. A vocal polyglot, her voice and compositions have been featured in TED conferences, on BBC Radio and TV, NPR, ABC Australia, and live at countless venues from Lincoln Center to Royal Festival Hall.
Moira Smiley’s unique, folk-rooted style has been described as “some of the most captivating music you’ll hear from some of the sparest ingredients” (The Providence Journal). Seven Days praised her for her “high-voltage harmonies” and ability to “mix Bartok with street-singing,” creating “a genre-bending world tour of rootsy tunes.” When she’s not leading her own vocal group, moira smiley & VOCO, Moira has toured with pop artist, tUnE-yArDs; Irish super-group, SOLAS; The Lomax and Folklife Projects; and Billy Childs’ “Laura Nyro Re-Imagined”. Moira premiered her solo album Unzip The Horizon at the Savannah Music Festival in 2018, and published its companion choral Songbook in 2019.
THE INTERVIEW
PJ: Could you tell us a bit about your musical background growing up, and what some of your biggest musical influences have been in your life?
MS: As a kid, I anchored around my classical piano studies, but got shivers hearing singers and any performances where musicians improvised and “played by ear.” Earliest memories were singing with family from the Fireside Book of Folk Songs, barbershop harmony, and songs from old American Broadway musicals. When I was 9, I learned Russian songs for an “art exchange” between American and Russian kids. A couple years later, I started learning Serbian and Croatian songs from a folk musician who’d collected them during her Fulbright research in those countries. These non-American songs gave me an inkling of the endless diversity of non-pop, non-classical singing around the world. Little did I realize that Bloomington was a perfect place for me to start exploring this on my own.
While at IU, I started the vocal quartet, VIDA. We started touring, and were picked up by the prestigious IMG Artists booking agency in NYC. When we broke up I moved to California and found myself being useful to a heavily-touring Balkan Folk ensemble as well as Early Music projects in the U.K. These brought me a sense that it was very possible to move around the world via music-making. I received my first commission as a composer from a St. Louis dance-theater company. Most of these early jobs grew from folk music connections, IU connections and meeting artists at the APAP Booking Conferences around the country. Because I was careful to follow these enthusiastic meetings up, I started creating a network of allies.
PJ: You came to IU to pursue a degree in piano performance, and ended up graduating with a degree in Early Music Vocal Performance! What sparked this change in direction?
MS: Chiefly I switched degrees when I realized my folk and choral-music-trained voice could be useful for pre-“Bel Canto” repertoire. Studying early music stimulated my early loves of improvising/arranging and music outside the Euro-North American music mainstream. And…honestly, I couldn’t stay awake practicing piano for 8 hours a day in the practice rooms – ha! I did love the incredible hush of the Music Practice Building though… Weirdly, I came to IU partially because the practice rooms were so much friendlier to me than UMich or Oberlin’s!
MS: Folk Music and Early Music were both umbrella genres that were growing what I call devotional paying audiences through newly expanded recording distribution and promotion. These are also areas of music that are used to ‘growing in the shade’ – with artists and scholars working to dig up stories, connections, ways of doing things from distant times and lands without worrying much about monetization. These were scholarly or communal musical crafts that invited its devotees to innovate and be exploratory because, after all, these were lineages we still knew so little about! I studied classical and pre-classical art music by day at IU, but my free time was spent at IU’s Archives of Traditional Music and getting listening recommendations from LOTUS Festival founder Lee Williams. ‘World Music’ was a fairly fresh genre in the music business, so there was a lot of new ‘folk’ music being made under its umbrella – often by conservatory-trained musicians seeking that exploratory spirit.
MS: In my later twenties, I entered a difficult, very instructive period of founding a new ensemble based out of my new home of Los Angeles, and…slowly burning myself out trying to do everything as an independent in the demanding economy of California. Band breakups were a central crucible for me – extremely difficult ways to both learn about myself and how to lead and collaborate with other young human beings who were discovering themselves and the (often hazy) rules of money and music.
Then? Serious meditation practice changed everything, and helped launch me into, and truly enjoy what’s happening now. The years of writing emails for upwards of 8 hours a day, and starting a publishing business were certainly the grind that helped give me stability today. I feel I have a network of fertile relationships outside of gatekeepers and strictly ‘gotta-make-it-make-money’ music interactions. We have shared devotion to these artistic crafts that always teach us and remind us that we rely upon each other. Success is your access to moments of true joy. Success is when you trust that where-you-are-now is just right. It’s hard to do in a capitalist society so full of inequalities and injustices, but developing this trust saves me from my constant anxiety that I won’t survive! I think of that trust as an ‘inner grin’.
PJ: Your music has a very soulful, human, authentic quality. Do you have any underlying musical philosophies that drive you artistically?
MS: Thank you! Yes. The whole body can become the music. If you keep moving in your artistic practice daily, you’ll run into the moments of channeling the ‘thing’, the ‘feeling’ you seek. The rest is listening. Also, don’t ever think of others as competitors – they are in symbiosis with you, whether they bring up dark or light feelings. Improvise.
PJ: Your compositions are incredibly diverse, ranging from Time in Our Voices–a contemporary classical work featuring a cappella choir and mobile phones–to your arrangements for your vocal quintet VOCO, which use body percussion and material from many different folk traditions. How do your experiences in one genre inform and influence you when you work in another genre? Did you ever have to deal with a feeling of disconnect between your “classical self” and your “folk self” and your “pop self”?
MS: I wrote my first folk-pop song at age 7, pieces in the ‘shape-note’ folk-hymn style throughout my teens, and then focused on writing a cappella music for years. The voice and its physicality are the unifying concepts in my work. I want singers to be fierce, joyous and utterly present in the music. I find that my writing (and singing too!) has been based on my feelings for the ensemble and current environment we share. When I’ve been unsuccessful, I’ve not listened thoroughly enough or I can’t picture the performing forces clearly in my ‘ear’.
Yes, I used to have that disconnect between musical identities happen with some frequency in my 20s, but as I’ve discovered my perspective and writing ‘voice’, I find I’m called into situations precisely because of my equal respect and love for the depth of various genres.
PJ: What would your advice be for those who are in the world of classical music and want to incorporate more diversity of traditions and genres in their lives and work, but don’t know where to start?
MS: Simply? Seek out listening experiences that “blow you away.” Listen to musical archives at the Library of Congress (online), follow curators like Dust-to-Digital, look up old “world music” record labels, look up concert programming at “highbrow” art institutions like The Barbican, The Industry Opera Company to see how they’re responding to the ever-changing zeitgeist of cultural awareness and responsibility.
PJ: How do you stay creative in times of low inspiration or motivation?
MS: Exercise, meditation, humor, experiencing art forms outside my own.
Many thanks to Moira Smiley for sharing her inspiring story! The OECD will be featuring Moira Smiley for a Facebook Live Innovation Roundtable on Friday, May 1, from 12-1pm. If you would like to participate in the Zoom conversation, register here. Otherwise, simply tune into Facebook Live on the OECD page!
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