Howard Jay Smith is the award-win­ning author of Beethoven In love: Opus 139, and Meet­ing Mozart: From the Secret Diaries of Loren­zo Da Ponte. Smith serves on the board of direc­tors of the San­ta Bar­bara Sym­pho­ny and is a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Beethoven Soci­ety. He is cur­rent­ly at work on a new nov­el about Giuseppe Verdi.