Nicholas Michael Smith was born in 1967. He read music at Cambridge University, England and studied conducting and composition privately with Reginald Thompson.

Mr. Smith relocated to Beijing in 1995. Since that time, he has worked with the International Arts Salon, a professional opera group for whom he has conducted Rigoletto, La Traviata, Carmen, Amahl and the Night Visitors and the experimental opera Arianna, and the Production Company, a community group for whom he has conducted the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas Iolanthe and The Pirates of Penzance. In 2003, Mr. Smith was the musical director of Beijing first fully staged Broadway musical Lady in the Dark.

Mr. Smith is an active conductor of orchestral and choral music. In 1997, he founded the chamber orchestra Beijing ContemporAIR, which regularly performs orchestral music from the 18th to 20th centuries in the Forbidden City Concert Hall. From 1998 to 2005 Mr. Smith was the permanent conductor of the Baroque Chamber Chorus of Beijing, with whom he introduced Beijing audiences to a wide range of western choral music. In 2002, Mr. Smith founded the International Festival Chorus IFC, a not-for-profit choral society which specializes in the performance of large-scale choral works (www.beijingifc.org). With the IFC , Mr. Smith has given PRC first performances of works as diverse as Bach St. Matthew Passion and Constance Lambert The Rio Grande. Acclaimed as one of the best choirs in Asia, the IFC was invited to perform at the 5th Beijing Music Festival in the televised PRC premier of Mahler 8th Symphony under the baton of the Festival artistic director Yu Long. The IFC has also performed with the China Philharmonic Orchestra.

Mr. Smith also conducts the Beijing Youth Palace Symphonic Wind Orchestra which won a gold medal at the Kerkrade World Music Contest in 2005. He has collaborated with such world famous artists as Klaus Bassler, Jan Stigmer and Lu Siqing, and Chinese orchestras including the China National Symphony Orchestra, the China Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Film Symphony Orchestra of China.