I am delighted and honored to introduce you to Sharon Smith – Emmy nominated film and TV music editor, composer and creator who came to Miami 4 years ago from LA.
When she learned about PIANO SLAM, she joined our committee because she was intrigued by the mission and impact of this program. This experience has inspired her to pursue collaborations with other artists and art forms about the social issues of our time.
Some of the first such collaborations evolved directly from PIANO SLAM 9 in 2017. She took a great interest in two of the poetry competition winners, middle school student Ayeisha Kirkland and high school student Nina Ahmadi. They created two new poems for the work with Sharon, the former writing a rap on motivating young voters, the latter a direct response to the Parkland shooting in February 2018. Both are powerful performances and reflect her decision to make videos with young people.
The best introduction about her work and her vision is from Sharon Smith herself. She eloquently talks about what motivates her passions, and introduces each video. Although only the first two are directly related to Dranoff and PIANO SLAM, I wanted to include the three others Sharon shared with us, which show the breadth of her interests in expressing social issues, and her fantastic creativity.
Things, pottery, may break, but we can mend the broken pieces to transform them into a new reality.
Warmly,
Gabriele Fiorentino
President,
The Dranoff 2 Piano Foundation
Piano Slam
