A graduate of the acclaimed Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts with a First Class BA (Hons) degree in music and an associate of the Victoria College of Music, Craig Smith is an experienced and multi-skilled professional musician based in Preston. His primary instruments are piano and keyboards, and he also plays Latin percussion, bass and rhythm guitar. Working freelance in many musical disciplines, Craig is available for tuition, as a live performer, a composer/arranger, a record producer/ mastering engineer, and a musical director and accompanist.
To see an informal 'CV' listing Craig's music qualifications, projects on which Craig has worked, ways to find out more about artists with whom Craig has worked, and to find out more about those under whom Craig has trained, please click here.
The Early Years
Craig was born in Preston in 1986 and took up piano and keyboards aged nine at the local Technics Music Academy, with tutor Chris Cookson. Craig sped to grade 5 piano and music theory within three years and was a winner two years running in the Technics Music Festival, where he discovered sequencing and programming.Ian Carten - then a top figure at the TMA - encouraged Craig to study Music Technology at Preston College, and when Ian became a lecturer there he introduced Craig to work as musical director. By now playing beyond grade 8 standard, Craig was offered a job teaching piano and keyboard at A&C Hamilton's Music School (previously Preston TMA) and took his first residency at a high-class city centre restaurant.
Top Class Training
It was Craig's musical direction that in 2004 would win him a coveted place at LIPA, one of the country's top performing arts institutions, co-founded by Sir Paul McCartney from whom Craig received his degree three years later.During his first year as a musical director on LIPA's Performing Arts Music degree, Craig developed a passion for both popular music performance and production. He also worked on co-founding a theatre production company, staging two musicals before the producers turned their attentions to other projects.
It was during this first year at LIPA that Craig discovered his potential as a composer/arranger, under the guidance of such practitioners as Paul Mitchell-Davidson and Gary Carpenter. He transferred to LIPA's Music degree for his final two years, during which he worked with several acts and bands as musical director or performing on piano, keyboards and percussion; he was commissioned as a composer scoring a Black Box Merseyside musical to celebrate Liverpool's 8th Centenary; and produced records for various singers and bands, with some of this work now available world-wide through iTunes.
Life as a Full-Time Pro
Since graduating, Craig received the aforementioned associateship and has developed a fantastic reputation as a full-time professional musician, with the majority of his work in the areas of performance (either with bands or as a soloist playing classical or pop styles) and tuition. In fact, Craig Smith Music Tuition is thriving to the extent of being oversubscribed! Less regularly these days, Craig also works as a musical director (with bands and in musical theatre), record producer, mastering engineer, composer, arranger and session musician.Craig continues to play at restaurants and private functions such as weddings and parties across the North West. Bookings for weddings in particular are coming in thick and fast at the moment, and stretch into 2011.
In May 2008, Craig was approached by bassist Nick Carey to become a founding member of instrumental funk band 110thSTREET. Auditions brought on board Tony Shatliff (drums), Paul Thornton (guitar) and Katie Miller (Vocals), and the band quickly morphed into the North West's premier funk-soul band.
As a teacher, Craig now provides tuition (mostly on piano and keyboard) to in excess of 100 clients per week. Clients are spread across Lancashire and the North West even as far away the Yorkshire and Cumbrian Borders. His tuition practice is now having to find other teachers to work with, who are helping to deal with the over-subscription of a massively popular service.
Craig was recently invited to take part as a studio guest in a BBC Radio Lancashire feature about the impact of the recession on the North West's professional musicians and live music industry.