Bio
Sam Wu's music "abounds in delicate colours, wisps of sound and sylvan textures" (Gramophone). Many of his works center around extra-musical themes: architecture and urban planning, climate science, and the search for exoplanets that harbor life.
Selected for the American Composers Orchestra's EarShot readings and the Tasmanian Symphony’s Australian Composers’ School, winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and First Prize at the Washington International Competition, Sam Wu also received Harvard's Robert Levin Prize and Juilliard's Palmer Dixon Prize.
Sam’s collaborations span five continents, notably with the orchestras of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Minnesota, Sarasota, Columbus, Melbourne, Tasmania, Macao, and Shanghai, the New York City Ballet, Cabrillo Festival, Sydney International Piano Competition, the Lontano, Parker, Argus, ETHEL, Romer, and icarus Quartets, conductors Osmo Vänskä, Marin Alsop, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Dina Gilbert, and Benjamin Northey, violinist Johan Dalene, and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei.
From Melbourne, Australia, Sam holds degrees from Harvard, Juilliard, and Rice. He is currently on faculty at Whitman College, as their Visiting Assistant Professor in Theory and Composition. Sam’s mentors include Anthony Brandt, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Tan Dun.