Broken Smiles is a lyrical character piece written in a contemporary tonal language. It is characterized by its bittersweet melodic lines and gentle harmonic progressions.
The main challenge is achieving a seamless, song-like projection of the melody while balancing the accompaniment.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
Broken Smiles is rated Henle level 4 of 9 — intermediate repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 5–6.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 4 — meaning you can already play level 3–4 pieces cleanly. Learning it one level early is possible as a stretch piece, but more than that usually leads to months of frustration.
A typical performance of Broken Smiles lasts about 3 minutes.
Broken Smiles is available as free public-domain sheet music on IMSLP — the score is linked directly from this page.
Pieces at a comparable difficulty and character include At the Close of Day by Gary Bachlund, ...and long gone by by Gary Bachlund, ...de los angeles by Gary Bachlund — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.