Gifted composer at midlife finds his audience

Composer Kile Smith seems always to have been here - one reason, perhaps, why nobody saw his midlife creative breakthrough coming.

As curator of the huge musical lending library that is the Fleisher Collection, he held forth at the Free Library of Philadelphia's main branch for three decades, helping the likes of Charles Dutoit find obscure French repertoire and sending music on loan all over the world. His compositions turned up on contemporary-music concert programs, but not always high-profile ones. Suddenly in 2008 at age 51, Smith emerged as one of Philadelphia's more distinctive choral composers with his hour-long Epiphany-season Vespers, premiered - and subsequently recorded - by the Crossing choir and the Renaissance band Piffaro.

"Vespers is a great piece," said Donald Nally, founder and conductor of the Crossing. "It wasn't till we put the whole thing together . . . that we all went, 'Oh - I get this!' "

Four years later, the Crossing and Piffaro are reprising Vespers in a pair of Philadelphia concerts Saturday and Sunday before migrating to New York City on Monday, where Smith hasn't been heard to any great extent since he was composer-in-residence for the Jupiter Symphony in 1999. The notoriously self-effacing Smith, now 55, isn't exactly exhilarated.

"My first thought is that I'm going to get my butt kicked," he said. "I've gotten nice reviews. And I feel OK about the piece. The New York press knows Piffaro a little bit and they know the Crossing . . . but I do worry."

Stakes are higher these days. He retired from the Fleisher Collection in August, and though he has adjunct teaching assignments, he's now a full-time composer. Several pieces are in the pipeline, including an instrumental dance suite, The Nobility of Women, to be premiered by Mélomanie, the Delaware-based early-music group, on Jan. 14 at Wilmington's Grace Church and Jan. 15 at Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill. In effect, he's facing the pressures of a young composer, but with the realistic awareness of middle age.