Lucas Marshall Smith is a composer, performer, and educator who engages with chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic, and electroacoustic music. His music endeavors to understand the human experience through the lenses of internal/external cognition, identity/representation, religion/spirituality, and tone/noise relationships. His doctoral thesis titled "Representations of Queer Identity in the Opera Fellow Travelers by Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce" reflects some of these interests. Smith’s music has received accolades from the American Prize— 2nd place  in the opera/theater/film/dance division for his one-act opera,  A Psalm of Silence,  and an  Honorable Mention for his choral work Lux Aeterna—the ASCAP Foundation—a finalist in the Morton Gould Young Composer Awards for his chamber orchestra piece, …through a glass, darkly… , and the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective—3rd place in the IGNITE Commissioning Competition for his choral work Hide and Seek. 

 

Smith’s music has enjoyed both national and international performance. Performances in the last several years include the Toronto International Electroacoustic Music Symposium (TIES), the International Electroacoustic Music Exhibition (MUSLAB), the RED NOTE New Music Festival, the 46th Annual Pellegrini Festival of New Music, the Society of Composers, Incorporated Student National Conference (SCI), the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States National Conference (SEAMUS), the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), the Electronic Music Midwest Conference (EMM), and the National Student Electronic Music Event (NSEME). Smith has received premieres and commissions from ensembles and music organizations including the New York-based Choral Composer/Conductor Collective (C4), ensemble loadbang, the Illinois Modern Ensemble, Heartland Sings, Inc., and ensemble mise-en. Active as a performer in the contemporary music scene, Smith recently performed at the 2023 New Music Gathering in Portland, Oregon. Smith's music is recorded on music from SEAMUS Volume 28 and the RMN Classical music label.

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Smith received his D.M.A. and M.M. in Music Composition from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his B.M. in Music Composition and Music Education from Bowling Green State University. During his graduate studies, Smith worked as the Operations Assistant for the Experimental Music Studios under the direction of Eli Fieldsteel and Scott Wyatt. He also held teaching assistant positions for the university’s Aural Skills and Music Theory courses. Some of his former composition teachers have included Burton Beerman, Carlos Carrillo, Christopher Dietz, Erin Gee, Marilyn Shrude, Reynold Tharp, Stephen Taylor, and electronic music studies with Elainie Lillios and Scott Wyatt.