Photo: Tristan Siegel
Described as “haunting”, “enigmatic”, “inspired”, and “a force to be reckoned with”, the music of Australian-born, US-based composer Samantha Wolf blends the classical, contemporary, acoustic, and electroacoustic worlds, while being grounded in the notated tradition. Although she specializes in instrumental and electroacoustic music, her diverse catalogue includes orchestral, vocal, dramatic, electronic, radio, and multimedia works, and theatrical sound design.
Samantha has worked with many of Australia’s leading new music ensembles, including the Melbourne and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Offspring, Elision, The Song Company, Ensemble Liaison, the Horsley Williams Duo, Rubiks Collective, and Kupka’s Piano. Her music has been featured internationally at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (Germany), soundSCAPE Festival (Italy), Impuls Academy (Austria), Bang on a Can (USA), and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (USA), and locally at the Tilde New Music Festival, 2high Festival, the ANAM Set, and the Metropolis New Music Festival. Her music has been broadcast on ABC Classic FM, 3MBS, PBS and 4MBS, and featured by Making Waves, Partial Durations, Collective Soundwaves, and ABC’s New Waves podcast. As a sound designer, her work has been featured by Elm Shakespeare Company, the Yale Cabaret, and WYBCx New Haven.
Current and future projects include scores for two upcoming feature films, and a new work for Sandbox Percussion.
Samantha holds undergraduate degrees from the Queensland Conservatorium and the University of Melbourne, and two Masters degrees from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Martin Bresnick, David Lang, Chris Theofanidis, and Aaron Jay Kernis. At Darmstadt, she studied with Rebecca Saunders, Liza Lim, Ash Fure, and Cathy Milliken. She is the recipient of several major awards, including Rubiks Collective’s Pythia Prize, Ensemble Offspring’s Noisy Women Commission, and the University of Sydney’s Sue W Composition Prize. In 2023-2024, Samantha is Visiting Co-Artistic Director of the University of Alabama Contemporary Ensemble, Artist in Residence at the Longy School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, and the newest member of ICEBERG New Music Collective in New York.
Samantha is represented by the Australian Music Centre and APRA in Australia, and ASCAP in the United States.
Bio current as of September 2023.
