Firmly established as one of the world’s great orchestral flutists, Joshua Smith is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator. He was appointed as Principal Flute of The Cleveland Orchestra (TCO) at age twenty, joining the ensemble in 1990.

Mr. Smith received a Grammy nomination for his Telarc recording, Air, and has recorded two discs with harpsichordist Jory Vinikour dedicated to the sonatas of J. S. Bach. He appeared on a Live from the Marlboro Music Festival recording and can be heard on more than a hundred TCO recordings. In 2014, he and TCO toured London’s Proms, Berlin’s Philharmonie, Vienna’s Musikverein, the Lucerne Festival, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw with the premiere of Jörg Widmann’s Flûte en suite, commissioned for Joshua by The Cleveland Orchestra.

Smith appears as a chamber musician throughout the United States, including recent and ongoing appearances with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series, at the Marlboro and Santa Fe Music Festivals, and with the Israeli Chamber Project. He has performed in collaborative concerts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Pensacola Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, and the 92nd Street Y in New York City. In the summer of 2025, he looks forward to appearances at Chamber Music Northwest and the Taipei Music Academy and Festival.

Joshua Smith is a Powell Artist and performs most often on the mopane wood Légende. A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, he worked closely with renowned pedagogue Frank Bowen before attending Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Julius Baker and Jeffrey Khaner. A passionate educator, Joshua is the author of The Audition Method for Flute, a two-volume excerpt book dedicated to early and mid 20th century flute repertoire.