Susan DeWitt Smith

A native of Portland, Oregon, Dr. Smith has an active career as both a soloist and chamber musician. She has performed multiple times as a concerto soloist with the Oregon Symphony and with smaller professional and community orchestras in the area, including the Portland Chamber Orchestra and the Columbia Symphony. She has been the featured soloist on subscription series with the San Diego Symphony, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Palomar Symphony, and the Dartmouth Symphony orchestra, and has performed and toured as a recitalist throughout the United States and New Zealand, China, and Thailand. A co-founder of the Nelson Chamber Music Festival in New Zealand, Dr. Smith is highly regarded as a chamber musician and has performed at festivals throughout the country, with musicians who include members of the Juilliard, Kronos, and Philadelphia string quartets. She has performed at the Bloch, Cascade Head, Cascade, Makrokosmos, and Classical Up Close (Oregon Symphony sponsored) music festivals in Oregon, as well as the Grand Teton, Hot Springs, and Olympic music festivals elsewhere in the country. Since summer 2023, she has been a festival artist at the Lake Chelan Bach Festival, in Chelan, WA. An enthusiastic and committed proponent of new music, Dr. Smith joined Portland’s Third Angle New Music Ensemble in 1999 and regularly performs new works for solo piano and chamber music with Third Angle and others. In 2015, she formed the Palatine Piano Trio with Oregon Symphony players Inés Voglar Belgique (Assistant Principal Second violin) and Nancy Ives (Principal Cello) in order to seek out and perform contemporary trio music, with special focus on composers of the Pacific Northwest. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Dr. Smith earned her MM from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music. She has recorded extensively on the KOCH International Classics label.