BIOGRAPHY

LYNN WEST

Lynn West, is a lady of a wide variety of talents--as a singer, dancer, actress, self-promoter, and a poet. In addition to all that, she loves botany, nature, and has a strong interest in photography.

She went on to earn a degree in music therapy at Illinois State University. In addition, she was a real estate professional, and was a former member of the Oak Park Arts Council, and currently holds a membership with Life Goes On (part of the Illinois Organ Donor/Tissue Program). She was also a member of the Hinsdale Music Club and former member of Downers Grove Music Club.

She already had done fundraising projects with Secretary of State Jesse White, including events involving the Jesse White Tumblers.

Currently, most of her poetry had been compiled in 4 chapbooks by Charles Joseph Smith, her friend, in preparation for publication mainly for school districts and even colleges. Several of her poems had already been set to music by the aforementioned. They also decided on a team group for a new musical project called Reflections.

CHARLES JOSEPH SMITH

Dr. Smith was born on October 22, 1970. He started his composing seriously at the Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University in 1990, where he took composition with Robert Lombardo and a composition seminar class with Patricia Morehead, and performed his "Carmen Fantasy" for piano during a student composition recital in 1992. He got a B.M. in Piano in 1994, cum laude.He continued his piano studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he got a M.M. in Piano in 1995, and a D.M.A. in Piano Performance and Literature in 2002. While at the university, he continued composing a lot more compositions.

He composed over 700 compositions, most of them for the piano alone, and started getting into the world of electro-acoustic composition in 1994, where he had composed MIDI compositions as well, which he uses for tape music. His music ranges from commercial all the way to classical and even experimental compositions. In addition to his campus accomplishments, he had some success as a pianist abroad. He attended the French Piano Institute in Paris in July 2000 and won an Honorable Mention in their final recital and competition. He went to Italy in 2001 to compete in the IBLA Grand Prize International Competition in Sicily, where he won an Honorable Mention for Musicianship. In the same year, he also performed in a master class under famous Hungarian pianist Csaba Király at the International Piano Master Class in Budapest. In March 2005, he performed his contemporary solo piano composition "Smooth Suspense" at the School of Designing a Society House Theater weekend in Urbana in March 2005. . In October 2005, he attended his first electro-acoustic composition conference, Electronic Music Midwest, at the Kansas City Kansas Community College, (in Kansas City, KS) , where his original tape composition, "Synth vs. Synth", was featured. In February, 2006, Charles participated in the Black History Celebration concert sponsored by the Chicago Music Association, performing the complete Sonata no. 1 by living African-American composer George Walker, and also performed his operatic piano transcription "Non più andrai" from Act II of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro in honor of Mozart's 250th birthday. Charles also loves creative writing, especially poetry, and also likes photography and drawing.