“…Smith’s vocal writing is tremendously intense,
yet ever admirably sublime.”
Jari Kallio (Adventures in Music) on Salme 55
“…Smith’s compositions incorporate medieval textures and chant, which are reflected and inflected through [his] own contemporary idiom, blurring the modal clarity of plainchant with vivid cluster-chords and dissenting moments of chromatic or dissonant color. The effect is at once familiar and unsettling in its strangeness – a distorted and original viewpoint on the past.”
Alexandra Coghlan
“It's fascinating how Smith picks up on the harmonic DNA of those ancient pieces while tapping a different harmonic language; the disc's highlight comes when his setting of Stond wel, Moder under rode follows the anonymous 13th-century setting of the same text, each piece supercharged with the ensemble's raw, intense but poetic style founded on the very basics of vocal communication.”
Gramophone on Gothic Voices’ Mary Star Of The Sea
Discography
LUX
Recorded in the glorious acoustics of Trondheim Cathedral in 2018, Lux features the Nidaros Cathedral Girls’ Choir, Trygve Seim (sax) and Ståle Storløkken (organ), conducted by Anita Brevik, performing Andrew’s 40-minute Requiem dedicated to the victims of the 2011 attack in Norway and young victims of conflict everywhere. Complemented by two works for strings (featuring the TrondheimSolistene) and upper voices by Ståle Kleiberg, the recording won producer Morten Lindberg a Grammy Award in 2020 for Best Immersive Audio Album.
Click on the covers below to see details of other recordings which include works by Andrew.
