Richard Harrison Smith

Richard Harrison Smith is a noted choral conductor, arranger and composer. For nearly 30 years, he was the conductor of the Jamestown College Concert Choir, in its day one of the most noted small-college choirs in the United States.

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Background

Smith was born in 1937 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

He received his BA in Music from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and went on to get a Masters' degree in Biochemistry as well as his PhD in Music.

Jamestown College Concert Choir

In 1969, Smith took over as director of the Jamestown College Concert Choir. Through a combination of strict discipline and intense musical training, Smith turned the choir - unusual among top-flight concert choirs in that less than 25% its members were music majors - into a highly well-regarded choir.

In 1972, on the choir's first tour of Europe, it became the first American choir of any kind to sing at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris - an honor they repeated on several subsequent tours.

In 1984, as Jamestown College began a long process of recovering from years of mismanagement, Smith was appointed Dean, a position he held for over a decade. He also filled in occasionally during those years as a biochemistry teacher, exercising his old master's degree.

On October 13, 1994, Smith conducted a 25th anniversary reunion concert at the Jamestown Civic Center; everyone who had ever sung in the choir was invited; 400 singers - over 40% of the choir's entire alumni body - participated.

Composer, Arranger

Smith has written many choral works, and has earned special acclaim as an arranger of traditional American negro spiritual songs.

Liver Transplant

In July of 1981, Smith - vacationing with his family in rural northern Minnesota - suffered a catastrophic liver failure due to a congenital liver condition. At the brink of death, he was rushed first to a hospital in Fargo, North Dakota, and then to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, for a then-highly-experimental liver transplant procedure. In an operation led by the procedure's inventor, Dr. Thomas Starzl, Smith received a new liver in early August of 1981. Smith was also one of the first transplant recipients to receive the new anti-rejection drug Cyclosporin..

At this writing, Smith remains one of the longest-lived liver transplant survivors in the world.

Retirement

In 1999, Smith retired from Jamestown College. He and his wife of over 45 years, June, live in Hackensack, Minnesota.

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