Gareth Dylan Smith plays Zildjian cymbals exclusively now under an arrangement with the famous 400-year-old company. Photo by Martha Dunne

Music

Drumroll, Please, for CFA’s Gareth Smith

School of Music prof has a new album, an endorsement deal, and a book in the works

This year has brought a steady drumbeat of good news for Gareth Dylan Smith: an album release, a book in the works, a faculty reappointment, even an endorsement deal.

Smith, a busy drummer and a College of Fine Arts School of Music assistant professor of music, music education, has released his second album, Sonata Pathétique, an unusual collaboration with pianist Austina Lee (CFA’23). They perform Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8 in C Minor Opus 13, Pathétique, with his snares and cymbals moving in and around the great composer’s original piano lines from 1798.

“The way I describe this is that it is as if the piece were a black-and-white outline of an intricate image, and Gareth’s responsive interaction from the drums colors it in,” Lee says. “The result is vibrancy that I could have never seen or heard otherwise. This is a testament to his musicianship and sensitivity and is a stark contrast to his rock drumming.”

“Everything clicked,” Smith says.

The two musicians initially met when Smith, teaching online, advised Lee on her dissertation, but they didn’t meet in person until she came to Boston to collect her doctorate in music arts at Commencement 2023. More than a year ago, they collaborated—again remotely—on a track for his 2024 solo album, Permission Granted, a series of wildly eclectic duets he recorded with several musicians. He and Lee played the second movement (the Adagio Cantabile) of the Pathétique, a piece she says she connects with deeply.

“As a classically trained pianist, I allowed myself to cower to pressures of precision and accuracy, but playing with Gareth I realized this could be a wonderful opportunity to expand my musicianship,” Lee says. “The more we collaborate, the more organic the expression feels, and the more my fears and nerves (which are still very present) fall away.”

On that album, Smith says, “this was the duet that I think was the most resonant, or the most successful as a musical conversation. It had that je ne sais quoi, transcendent whatever. So we decided to make the whole album.”

A trip to the UK last fall found the two in Wales, where Smith used to live and teach, at Fieldgate Studios, which is run by Andrew Lawson, a former drum student of Smith’s from the ’90s. “We came together to try the whole sonata, and it sounded—it felt—really good,” he says. It was mixed by Max Liebman (CFA’23), who runs Kingston, N.Y.–based Anthrophonic Records.

For the album, Lee sent Smith a recording of her playing the music, and he tried to write a drum part, but he couldn’t make it work until he got the score and sat down in Mugar Memorial Library for a couple of days, put on his headphones, and wrote out his part by hand.

“And then we got together and discussed what worked and what didn’t work, and where we were going to slow down, and where the score disagreed with what she was doing,” he says. “It took a really long time in practice rooms: did this part work, did that part work, do we want a cowbell there, is it fun or too much?”

After the one-day recording in Wales—the album is produced by Lee and Smith—Liebman took over mixing and mastering. “The first mix he sent us, actually, the piano was up here, and the drums were down there,” Smith says, “and we were like, no, it needs to sound like everyone’s having a conversation. Conversations at the Drums is the title of the book I’m starting to write about making my solo album. And the conversation is kind of the point.”

Smith and Lee are now a couple, and “we’re working on some Mozart and Debussy,” Smith says.

Always happiest with his sticks in hand

This year he also signed an endorsement deal with the legendary cymbal maker Avedis Zildjian Company of Norwell, Mass. Already a Zildjian booster, he visited the Zildjian headquarters in March and was able to pick out a few new cymbals from the company as the newest member of its “educational artist” team.

“Zildjian has contributed to bringing artists’ and educators’ visions to life with our instruments for over 400 years,” says Brian Stockard, the company’s senior education relations manager. “Gareth has great vision, and everyone at Zildjian is here to support his endeavors.”

“They spent five hours of the day with me, walking me around the factory, letting me try out symbols, showed me how they were made, and I spent the day choosing cymbals, it was beautiful,” Smith says. “I guess the BU brand is important to them. I don’t think other drummers are going to be buying Zildjian because, you know, a sociologist of music education is on their roster,” he says with a smile. “It’s good to be associated with them—they make the most delicious instruments.”

On the academic side, Smith’s faculty appointment at CFA was renewed for another four years. He teaches, largely online, graduate students in the music education program. And later this fall Oxford University Press will publish his book, Authentic Drum Kit Pedagogy. Cowritten with Virginia Davis, a professor of music education at the University of Texas Rio Grande, the book is for teachers from elementary through high school.

“Teachers know they should teach drums, but they often don’t know exactly what that means beyond holding the sticks and starting off,” he says. “They’re often so focused on, ‘Your right hand does this, your left hand does this, and then listen to the bass player.’ But it’s got to feel good.”

Smith performs frequently, including regular gigs around the Northeast with Blondie cover band Dirty Blond and the new wave band Black Light Bastards.

He was also on the organizing committee for this year’s International Society for the Sociology of Music Education symposium, held recently at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

And what exactly is the sociology of music education?

“I always boil it down to how music means what it means to people,” he says. “It’s the structures that inform meaning. If it’s institutional, if it’s ideological, if it’s personal. How things mean things is complicated and exciting.”

Smith says he’s always happiest, though, with his sticks in hand.

“I’m very grateful that I get to move between music and music education,” he says. “One of the cool things about the improvisation course is trying to rekindle students’ interest in music. They get so absorbed in their day jobs and teaching and in scholarship and the things you need to do to get a graduate degree that it’s easy to forget that music is what brought us here and what brings us so much life.”