Rhian Samuel
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Name
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Rhian Samuel
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Bio
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In writing music, Rhian keeps the performer and performance uppermost in her mind. She believes that the performer contributes creatively to the work and that the composer should always offer him/her the space to make this contribution, a particular challenge in notated music. She acknowledges many other influences on her music, particularly those of her rich Welsh literary and musical heritage, the landscape of her present home in mid-Wales overlooking the Dyfi estuary and Cardigan Bay and her long sojourn in the USA. She is interested in all facets of classical music, particularly early music, and American music of all kinds; in her youth she played the oboe in orchestras and the viol and wind instruments in early music groups. She identifies with her female colleagues in a profession still dominated by males, seeing her position, somewhat outside the male tradition, as an exciting one with many challenges and opportunities, not one, as in former times for many women composers, that must be denied.
Rhian has written for all kinds of ensembles as well as for solo instruments/voices. Her orchestral works have been premiered by BBCNOW, the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia 21, the Brunel Ensemble, the BT Scottish Ensemble, Sinfonia Adesso and others. Orchestral conductors with whom she has worked include Leonard Slatkin, Tadaaki Otaka, Richard Hickox, Martyn Brabbins, Jac van Steen, Tecwyn Evans, Cayenna Ponchione, George Vass and Holly Mathieson. Vocal music is also an important part of Rhian's output; she has written works for many renowned solo singers and accompanists.
In the United States Rhian taught at Washington University St Louis, where she completed a doctorate on 16th-century musica ficta, and the St Louis Conservatory of Music; in Britain at Reading University, City University London (where she supervised DMA students from the Guildhall School and is now Emeritus Professor) and Oxford University where she was a member of the Music Faculty and tutored composition undergraduates at Magdalen College.
