In nearly fifty years of composing music, Stuart Saunders Smith has amassed a body of well over 150 works that have consistently defied the status quo. His compositional aesthetics are broad and somewhat different in every piece – many compositions feature wholly unique notational systems that the composer himself has invented. In categorizing Smith’s work, one finds four primary areas of focus: music of extreme rhythmic and melodic intricacy; musical mobiles with instrumental parts that freely interact; text-based compositions; trans-media systems for any kind of performing artist(s). At the core of each of these styles, there is a focus on language – body language, melody, and speech – which Smith uses as his primary tool for contemplating a deeper question: how do we perceive and interact with the sounds we hear around us? — bio as in 2019