Gabriella Smith was born in Berkeley, California, on December 26, 1991. The first performance of Field Guide took place at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium in Santa Cruz, California, on August 12, 2017, with Cristian Măcelaru conducting the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. 

Field Guide is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (two players), and strings. Approximate performance time is ten minutes.

In the composer's own words:

"In the past few years, I have become obsessed with making field recordings everywhere I go. It began with my desire to record the unfolding and trajectory of the dawn choruses I remember hearing every early Sunday morning as a teenager on the drive out to Point Reyes Bird Observatory, where I would volunteer as a bird bander. It would always start just as we drove past Lagunitas Creek, about thirty minutes before sunrise, and we’d turn off the music and roll down the windows and let in the glorious cacophony and cold morning air. 

Since then I have recorded dawn choruses and many other natural and human-produced soundscapes around the world, while backpacking in the Sierras, Cascades, and Andes, in temperate and tropical rainforest, in desert, in coastal scrub, in oceans, tide pools, bays, lakes, and glacial streams, recording underwater sounds with my hydrophone, and in the streets and parks and subways of the cities I have spent time in. I envisioned Field Guide as a collage inspired by these various recordings, my improvisations with them on violin and voice, and experiments processing them electronically. 

Many thanks to the Cabrillo Festival for commissioning this piece in honor of John Adams’ 70th birthday. John, I dedicate this piece to you in celebration of your birthday and especially in gratitude for the many ways you and your music have inspired me over the years."

—Gabriella Smith