Along with his wife, singer Nicola Walker Smith (born 1964), he has written and recorded numerous pieces of music and published American Originals (Faber & Faber, 1995); a book of interviews with American contemporary composers such as John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and Terry Riley. Although strongly influenced by American composers, much of Smith's musical work borrows lyric content from traditional English verse and Romantic poets such as Emily Brontë, John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Elizabeth Siddal.
