Acadia park inspiration for new CD Fans move Orono pianist

Barbara Smith composed and recorded the music on her first CD for her family, friends and piano students. She made a second recording for her fans – the thousands of people who have purchased “Sense of Acadia” since its release two years ago.

In response to the hundreds of cards, letters and e-mails she’s received since then, Smith, 66, returned to her favorite places in Acadia National Park to write 12 more piano solos. This time, the retired Orono piano instructor included compositions inspired by all four seasons, not just the lush summer months. The new CD is titled “A Sense of Acadia, Volume II.”

Smith said she was in a very different mood when she composed and recorded the new pieces. While she’s always found inspiration in Acadia, the piano teacher originally sought to write pieces that could be played by her intermediate students, but weren’t too trite or difficult for them.

“With the second batch, I wasn’t thinking about my students,” she said in a recent interview at her Orono home. “I wanted the music to touch people again; to bring them some serenity and to bring them back to Acadia to their favorite peaceful spot.”

More than 300 people have written Smith to thank her for the music and to tell her how it has affected them and the people they love. Some have asked permission to add lyrics to the compositions for weddings and other special occasions. Other have told Smith how much peace the music has brought to them in times of illness or stress. And, a handful of people have written to tell her of loved ones who died peacefully listening to her work.

The Rev. Patricia Moore, pastor of Veazie Congregational Church, said that Smith’s music helped calm one of her parishioners a few days before his death. The man had been moved from the hospital to Orono Commons, a nursing home on Bennoch Road.

“He was not really lucid,” said Moore, “but he was very agitated, thrashing and coughing. While we were waiting for the staff to bring some medication to calm him down, I put in Barbara’s CD. Well, immediately, he stopped moving around and was very still. The nurse saw the change in him and said that he must have gotten his medication, but he hadn’t. The music calmed him. It also gave some solace to the family members who were with him.”

Smith first began composing about five years ago when her husband Kent gave her some blank staff paper. During the summer of 1998, she visited the places in the park and on Mount Desert Island that had always renewed, refreshed, inspired and calmed her. For the new music, Smith found inspiration along Ocean Drive, at Somes Sound, Seawall, the Asticou Azalea Gardens and the oceanfront park in Bar Harbor.

“I go by myself, soak up the beauty and the music starts coming out,” she said of her writing process. “I write down just the melody on site, but I also hear the harmony. When I come home, I play it on the piano and, then, get down all the notes.”

The composer said that there are too many distractions at home for her to compose there. Judging from the feedback Smith’s gotten from her fans, she said, “People can really feel where it was written, so how it affects me must come out through my music.”

One of the many e-mails she’s received came from Jeff Peltz of Brooklyn, N.Y. He wrote of her music that “When I listen to it and close my eyes, I feel like I’m sitting on a ledge high over the water in Acadia.”

Like her first CD, the new one was recorded in Minsky Recital Hall at the University of Maine and engineered by John Dyer of Unintentional Music in Blue Hill. Smith markets the CD and cassette tapes herself throughout Maine, but they find their way across the country and, in a couple of cases, around the globe.

Smith does not think she will go back to Acadia for musical inspiration again. Maine fans have encouraged her to go to Baxter State Park next, but she has a more personal project in mind, tentatively titled “A Sense of Roots.” Smith grew up on a 165-acre dairy farm in Dayton, seven miles west of Biddeford. Her sister and brother as well as nieces and nephews now live on the property, even though it is no longer a working farm.

“I want to go back to some of the places where I spent my childhood and see what comes to me,” she said. “I don’t know if it will come to me quite as easily as the Acadia pieces did, but I want to capture that life before it is forgotten.”

Smith, who still works part-time as a church organist and choir director, said that being in Acadia “is a worship experience” and that her music has “almost become a ministry.”

“I’m excited to know what the music has done for people,” she said. “It’s touched people’s lives and given them peace and serenity. I’m so pleased and hope the new music will affect them the same way.”