In the Hess basement, you might see a tall man walking around the practice rooms with his cello case — it’s black, with bright blue paint splatters all around. That’s Wayne Smith, one of Deerfield’s cello instructors, and he is probably hunting down one of his students for their lesson.
Mr. Smith has been working as a freelance cellist since the early ’90s. He has played with many chamber ensembles, including the National Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonic of New Jersey, and the Heidelberg Castle Festival Orchestra. He was also part of the Portland Piano Trio, and the co-founded 240 Strings, a nonprofit organization that offers free music lessons to underprivileged children.
He is also the principal cellist of the Harlem Chamber Players, which he described as a “a diverse collective of musicians.” The group focuses on repertoire written by Black and female composers in order to represent “all the various parts of the American fabric,” according to Mr. Smith. A founder of the group invited him to join after noticing him busking in New York around Christmas time 10 years ago. He said that he chose to busk because he “found that it paid better than a lot of things. It’s sporadic and unpredictable, but it pays about the same as teaching, hourly wise.”
After teaching at Deerfield and Amherst College for one and a half years, Mr. Smith will be leaving to join the pit orchestra of Sweeney Todd, premiering on Broadway on March 26. Mr. Smith says that what he will miss most about teaching is “the students and the opportunity to just share with each other. Just last month, one of my students at Amherst College played the Dvorak Concerto with the orchestra, and afterwards, the conductor announced that I will be leaving the faculty of Amherst to go play on Sweeney Todd, which made people clap, but made my heart sink.”
Mr. Smith elaborated, “I love learning from the students and teaching the students. I love helping people find their voice, because that’s what music helped me to do. And we talk about technique, but it’s not really about that. It’s about expression, and communication, and emotion, and sharing, and being vulnerable, and all those kinds of things. So I will miss that…It suddenly makes sense why I was driving 45,000 miles a year to be able to play and teach as I was.”