Reitze Smits has a long career as a performing musician and teacher to his name. He has distinguished himself in various areas: as a specialist in early music, as a publisher of organ arrangements, but also as the initiator and programmer of Festival voor de Wind, in which the organ was combined with other performing arts. In recent years, editions of his compositions and articles on interpretation have appeared, which can be found on other pages on this website.
He studied at the conservatories in Utrecht (organ, improvisation, composition) and The Hague (harpsichord). After that he was a teacher of organ and improvisation at the Utrecht Conservatory and the Lemmens Institute in Leuven for several decades.
The interpretation of baroque music and especially the fascination for the music of Bach determined his interest for years. At international competitions in Bruges, Toulouse and Nijmegen he won high prizes with it. With his ensemble Concerto Strumentale he performed at important festivals, where he was especially successful with self-made “reconstructions” of organ concertos by Bach. He became wellknown with his Bach interpretations on the channel Allofbach (see Media). He played concerts in most European countries and gave courses in Toulouse, Haarlem, Brno, Oundle and Mallorca.
Inspired by his work as an organ teacher, improvisation and later music also became his interest again. This resulted in organ arrangements of music from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In his CD recordings, too, he mainly opted for less common repertoire, such as the manualiter Toccatas by Bach in Nijkerk, arrangements of music by Mendelssohn and Schubert in Zaltbommel, Milhaud and Poulenc in the Orgelpark, and Rachmaninoff in Diekirch. The most recent CD was recorded in the cathedral in Brussels with the local organist, Bart Jacobs, as the organ duo 422play, with music by Debussy, Bruckner and his own work.
As a cantor-organist he was connected to churches in Breukelen and Zaltbommel. In Vianen he was organist for several years and involved in the construction of the Thomas organ, for which he is active in the organization and performance of concerts. He provided a performance of all of Bach's organ music there and regularly conducted his St. John Passion.
In order to support organ culture, he took the initiative to establish the Stichting voor de Wind, which from 2002 to 2017 organised festivals in which the organ was combined with art forms such as dance, poetry, gospel, mime, children's theatre, acrobatics, film and video mapping. Festivals were held in Amsterdam, Utrecht and in cities along the IJssel.
An international project called Connecting Arts in collaboration with Copenhagen, Malmö and Toulouse presented specially made performances on stages in various European cities. Reitze Smits participated in performances with Dance Works Rotterdam and the improvisation trio Wind Images, with the Frisian poet Tsjebbe Hettinga and percussionist Sytze Pruiksma.
He was awarded the Sweelinck Prize in 2010 for his merits as a teacher and for promoting organ culture.