Walter Smith III is an American jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 tenor saxophonist

Tenor saxophone

The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...

.
Walter Smith III has garnered notoriety by playing with some of the biggest names in Jazz, such as trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard

Terence Blanchard

Terence Oliver Blanchard is an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, arranger, and film score composer. Since he emerged on the scene in 1980 with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and then shortly thereafter with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Blanchard has been a leading artist in jazz...

, Roy Haynes

Roy Haynes

Roy Owen Haynes is an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Haynes is among the most recorded drummers in jazz, and in a career lasting more than 60 years has played in a wide range of styles ranging from swing and bebop to jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz...

, Christian McBride

Christian McBride

Christian McBride is an American jazz bassist. His father, Lee Smith, and his great uncle, Howard Cooper, are well known Philadelphia bassists who served as McBride's early mentors...

, Mulgrew Miller

Mulgrew Miller

Mulgrew Miller is an American jazz pianist who performs in a number of jazz idioms. He began his career as member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.-Biography:...

, and Joe Lovano

Joe Lovano

Joseph Salvatore "Joe" Lovano is a post bop jazz saxophonist, alto clarinetist, flautist, and drummer. Since the late 1980s, Lovano has been one of the world's premiere tenor saxophone players, earning a Grammy award and several nods on Down Beat magazine's critics' and readers' polls...

. Also, he has toured with R&B artists such as Bilal, Destiny's Child

Destiny's Child

Destiny's Child was an American R&B girl group whose final line-up comprised lead singer Beyoncé Knowles alongside Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams. Formed in 1997 in Houston, Texas, Destiny's Child members began their musical endeavors in their pre-teens under the name Girl's Tyme...

, and Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Noelle Hill is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress.Early in her career, she established her reputation as a member of the Fugees. In 1998, she launched her solo career with the release of the commercially successful and critically acclaimed album, The Miseducation of...

. He regularly plays and records with modern jazz notables such as trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire

Ambrose Akinmusire

Ambrose Akinmusire is a jazz trumpeter.In 2007 Akinmusire was the winner of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, and the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition, two of the most prestigious jazz competitions in the world.-Biography:By the time the lone standard...

, Logan Richardson

Logan Richardson

Logan Richardson is an alto saxophonist, composer, & bandleader currently living in the New York City, NY area. He debuted as a bandleader with his 2007 critically acclaimed album "Cerebral Flow"...

, Aaron Parks

Aaron Parks

Aaron Parks is a jazz pianist.-Personal:Aaron entered the University of Washington at the age of 14 through the Transition School and Early Entrance Program as a double major in computer science and music...

, Justin Brown

Justin Brown

Justin O'Mara Brown is a professional American, Canadian football and Arena football defensive end for the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League. He was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Indianapolis Colts in 2005...

, and other musicians. He has released three albums, one for the Fresh Sound New Talent label (Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

), one for Space Time (France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

), and his most recent on the Criss Cross label (Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

).

Biography

Walter Smith III began playing the saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

 at the age of 7 in his hometown of Houston, TX

Houston, Texas

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...

. At Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts is a secondary school located at 4001 Stanford Street in the Montrose district of Houston, Texas. The school is a part of the Houston Independent School District....

, in 1998, Smith received a Clifford Brown/Stan Getz Fellowship from IAJE

International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE)

International Association for Jazz Education , formerly a not-for-profit corporation based in Manhattan, Kansas, was a volunteer-run organization that, among other things, allocated student scholarships through its approved festivals program. Its annual conference was a gathering point for...

 and NFAA

National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts

The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts honors the most talented high school seniors, or, more specifically, American students in the 17-18 year-old age bracket, in the performing, visual and literary arts through the YoungArts program...

; the NFAA Young Talent Award; a full tuition scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...

; and a United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts medal. Walter Graduated from Berklee in 2003 with a degree in Music Education.

Walter has performed all over the world participating in numerous national and international festivals as well as famed stages in the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 such as Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 and the Kennedy Center. Smith has shared the stage and/or appeared on recordings with many jazz notables including Terence Blanchard, Roy Haynes, Christian McBride, Eric Reed

Eric Reed (musician)

Eric Scott Reed, , in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an American jazz pianist and composer.His group Black Note released several albums in the 1990s.-Biography:...

, Mulgrew Miller, Joe Sample

Joe Sample

Joseph Leslie "Joe" Sample is an American pianist, keyboard player and composer.He is one of the founding members of the Jazz Crusaders, the band which became simply The Crusaders in 1971, and remained a part of the group until its final album in 1991 .- Biography :Sample began playing the piano...

, Bob Hurst, Myron Walden, Walter Beasley

Walter Beasley

Walter Beasley is an American saxophonist, a professor of music at the Berklee College of Music, and founder of Affable Publishing and Affable Records.-Biography:Beasley grew up in El Centro, California...

, Lewis Nash

Lewis Nash

Lewis Nash is an American jazz drummer. According to Modern Drummer magazine, Nash has one of the longest discographies in jazz. and has played on over 400 records by musicians, earning him the honor of being named Jazz's Most Valuable Player by the magazine in it's May, 2009 issue...

, Terri Lyne Carrington

Terri Lyne Carrington

Terri Lyne Carrington is a jazz drummer, composer, record producer and entrepreneur. She has played with jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Clark Terry, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Joe Sample, Al Jarreau, Yellowjackets, and many more...

, and a host of others. To date, Walter has appeared on over 75 recordings that are released worldwide.

Walter's debut recording as a leader was released in March of 2006 on the Fresh Sound New Talent label and features many of the brightest young jazz talents. His sophomore release, titled "Live in France", was released in October of 2009 to critical acclaim. His most recent album, “III”, was released in September of 2010 and was the #3 best seller on iTunes

ITunes

iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

 in the U.S. for it’s first week. It features Ambrose Akinmusire, Jason Moran

Jason Moran (musician)

Jason Moran is a jazz pianist and composer who debuted as a band leader with the 1999 album Soundtrack to Human Motion. Since then, he has garnered much critical acclaim and won a number of awards for his playing and compositional skills, which combine elements of stride piano, avant-garde jazz,...

, Joe Sanders

Joe Sanders

Joseph L. "Joe" Sanders was an American jazz pianist, singer, and bandleader associated with Kansas City jazz for most of his career....

, and Eric Harland

Eric Harland

Eric Harland is an American jazz drummer.Besides leading his own group Harland has performed with many renowned artists, including Wynton Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Joshua Redman, Ravi Coltrane, Kenny Garrett, Dave Holland, Charles Lloyd, Michael Brecker, Terence Blanchard, Walter Smith...

. (for reviews and info visit www.waltersmith3.com)

Over the past few years, besides leading a quintet, Walter is/has been a member of several amazing groups (recording and touring) including the Terence Blanchard group, Eric Harland's quintet, Ambrose Akinmusire's band, Christian Scott

Christian Scott

Christian Scott, born March 31, 1983, in New Orleans, Louisiana, is the 2010 Edison Award winner for Best International Jazz Artist and a Grammy Award-nominated jazz trumpeter, composer and producer. He has been heralded by JazzTimes magazine as "the Architect of a new commercially viable fusion"...

's group, the Sean Jones

Sean Jones (trumpeter)

Sean Jones is an American trumpeter and composer featured on the 2007 Grammy Award-winning Turned to Blue from Nancy Wilson. As a bandleader, Jones has released five albums under the Mack Avenue Records label...

 sextet, Jason Moran’s Big Bandwagon (In My Mind:Monk at Town Hall), and the Christian McBride situation band.

Walter also teaches at the acclaimed LA County High School for the Arts

External links

• http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=3053
• http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/arts/music/14playlist.html
• http://waltersmith3.com/live/