Tom Smith

Tom Smith (father) is a long time American university professor and multiple Senior Fulbright Professor of Music at the Romanian National University of Music. June 2013, he became the 21st inductee into the DownBeat Jazz Education Hall of Fame. He was introduced to fine arts at an early age by his father, a noted trombonist and painter, best known for his work with New Orleans traditional jazz artist Murphy Campo. Tom Smith was the longest continuous member of the North Carolina Artist-in-Residence Program (1984–1992).It was during this time that he founded some of the most critically acclaimed community and regional jazz ensembles in America, while performing for over two-million people.His best known group was the Unifour Jazz Ensemble, an eighteen-piece big band that placed seventh in the 1988 Down Beat Readers Poll. In that same poll, Smith placed fifth in the trombone category. As an improvising soloist, he has performed and toured with Louie Bellson, Clark Terry, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Chris Potter, the New York Voices, Nicholas Payton, Herb Ellis, Donald Byrd, Darius Brubeck and the Manhattan Transfer. Smith is also a noted music historian and researcher. In 2001 he and his research partner Gary Westbrook received international recognition for identifying the musical fingerprint for identification of unknown personnel on early recordings. Since 2002, his work in Romania has drawn wide attention in the field of jazz education. Called by a former Fulbright Executive Director the premminent jazz Fulbright Scholar in the program's history, Smith is the only foreigner to have been awarded The Romanian National Radio Prize (Romania's highest musical honor). Most recently, he founded and coordinated the Romanian Jazz Education Seminar, the first summer music camp staged in Romania, and helped found the first western styled jazz music college in that country. In 2008, Smith was the recipient of the International Association for Jazz Education Jazz Ambassador Award, in special ceremonies in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, having already been awarded Outstanding Service to Jazz Education honors in 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006. In 2009, Tom received his seventh Fulbright Award (a record for musician professors) and accepted residency at the Serbia Academy of Music (University of Arts) drafting the curriculum for their jazz program. Later, he accepted guest jazz studies appointments in Budva, Montenegro. In 2010, Tom and his wife Sarah relocated to Northeast China where he developed a jazz music strategy for teaching English to native Mandarin speakers. In 2011 he was appointed a professor of music at Ningbo University (Zhejiang Province, China) assigned to establish the first academic jazz major on the Chinese mainland and serve as editor in chief of China's first English language journal of musicology. In 2013, Tom was inducted by DownBeat magazine into their Jazz Education Hall of Fame. A noted writer of fiction, Tom is best known in literary circles as the author of the novel The Tahchee Chronicles.