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.

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 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 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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