Steven Sametz

Largely self-taught as a composer, Sametz's style is influenced by Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, French Impressionism, the works of Igor Stravinsky and world music. His early exposure to choral singing, beginning in fifth grade, gave him a predilection for singing lines and communication of expressive text through music. Beginning with some of his earliest works (e.g.: e.e, cummings’ thy fingers make early flowers, (1972) for soprano solo and string quartet; Farewell (1972) setting Kahil Gibran's text for a cappella chorus) it is the expressive line of the text that guides the compositional process.

Sametz has created several ballets, from his early Arachne’s Busy Shopping Day (1987) to his setting of a Tlingit creation myth, The White Raven-ballet-concerto for piano, chorus and orchestra (2005), to the more recent Small Steps/Tiny Revolutions (2008) written for the Rioult Dance company of New York, premiered at Lehigh University and subsequently staged in Florida, Ohio and State College, PA.

Sametz's earliest choral-orchestral works exhibit his fascination with a wide variety of orchestral coloration. His use of Burmese gongs (muji no makotoba—Scripture without words on a text by Hakuin Ekaku), hammer dulcimer, onde martenot and cimbalon (cent fois plus ombre... on a text by Robert Desnos) lead to later experimentation with Indian tampura and tablas in his The Demon King (1996) and Shamalyo (2007), (both in collaboration with the Indian singer/writer, Arati Shah-Yukich). This sound palette is further expanded by his more recent use of electronics, using digital delay on obbligato instruments with choir. His Fantasia on Jesu, meine Freude (2009),Voices of Broken Hearts (2010) and Fantasia on Call to Remembrance (2011) all stretch the boundaries of human singing into the realm of enhanced electronic vocal production. Use of electronic enhancement was foreshadowed in his The White Raven — ballet-concerto for piano, chorus and orchestra (2005) and the violin concerto of 2006, Be/dazzled. Sametz used digital delay on six core instruments in his setting of A Child’s Requiem.

Sametz has received commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Connecticut Council on the Arts, and the Santa Fe music festival, creating new works for Chanticleer, The Princeton Singers, the Dale Warland Singers, The Los Angeles Master Chorale, Philadelphia Singers, Pro Arte Chamber Choir, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Connecticut Choral Artists, Joyful Noise and the King of Thailand. In 2013, Sametz won the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Composition Prize, administered through the University of Connecticut. In fulfillment of the award, Sametz composed the oratorio, A Child’s Requiem, in memory of the twenty-six victims slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The work received extensive national coverage through the CBS Evening News, NPR, ABC News, U.S. News & World Report, and Associated Press coverage. Scored for three soloists, children's chorus, child speakers, adult choir, and chamber orchestra, and based on writings by children combined with texts of Emerson, Dickinson, H.D. and Sametz, it asks the powerful question: How can we keep our children safe in a culture of violence?

In 2011, Sametz received one of the country's most prestigious choral commissions, the American Choral Directors Association's Raymond W. Brock Memorial Commission, to write Three Mystical Choruses for premiere by Chanticleer at the 2011 ACDA National Convention in Chicago. In 2009, Sametz's Music’s Music, commissioned by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, was premiered at Disney Hall in Los Angeles. Dr. Sametz's compositions have been heard throughout the world at the Tanglewood, Ravinia, Salzburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Santa Fe music festivals.

Reflecting the evolving history of gay civil liberties, Sametz's works speak to the struggle that has been inherent for the gay population for centuries. While Carmina amoris is his most ambitious setting of gay love texts, other compositions of his take up this theme: Dulcis amor, commissioned by the Harvard Glee Club (2004), sets a love poem of the ninth-century cleric Alcuin of York; We Two (2006–7), commissioned by the Minnesota-based male ensemble Cantus for a consortium of nine male choirs in the US and Canada, sets lines from Walt Whitman’s ground-breaking Calamus cluster from Leaves of Grass. The 2009 setting of Whitman's We Two Boys Together Clinging for baritone and tenor duet with vibraphone and violoncello was later recast as the central movement of his Not an End of Loving (2010) for 12-voice chamber choir, which was premiered and recorded by Chanticleer. Both versions are published by E.C. Schirmer.

Sametz has delved into the rich field of medieval gay literature found in clerical letters and marginalia. His largest work to date, Carmina amoris (2001; revised 2010) is a choral symphony in six movements for large orchestra, choir, two soprano and tenor soloists, setting monastic love letters of Alcuin, Ausonius, and the anonymous clerical writings preserved in the Carmina Cantabrigiensia. This 60-minute work is published by E.C. Schirmer and recorded by Lehigh University Choral Arts under the direction of the composer. In 2011, the work was given at Carnegie Hall under the direction of the composer with Carmen Pelton, soprano and William Burden, tenor and the Lehigh University Choral Arts.

As Artistic Director of the Princeton Singers since 1998, Sametz has recorded four CDs and led the ensemble in repertoire from the medieval era to newly composed works. Repertoire includes Messiaen's Cinq rechants, Stephen Paulus's I Love (commissioned by the Princeton Singers) and works of DuFay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Milhaud, Mahler, Tavener and many works written for them by Sametz. In 2004, The Princeton Singers collaborated with Lehigh Choral Arts in a staged version of the Bach Matthäuspassion. The Princeton Singers has been featured at conferences of the American Choral Directors Association, American Organists Guild and Chorus America.

It was with his in time of (1997), a setting of e. e. cummings’ poem, that Sametz's works came to international attention. Originally conceived as a large work for three orchestras and five choirs, it was later revised for the twelve singers of Chanticleer, in which form it was featured on their 1999 Grammy Award-winning CD, Colors of Love. There is a third scoring (recorded by The Princeton Singers and the composer) utilizing the original choral forces with chamber orchestra.

His works first came to prominence through his collaboration with the internationally acclaimed professional ensemble, Chanticleer. Sametz's setting of ¡O llama de amor viva! A Mystical Vision of St. John of the Cross was written for Chanticleer in 1987 and featured at the Chorus America convention in 1988. The cinematic approach of this fourteen-minute work — an opening villancico yielding to a portrait of the incarceration of San Juan de la Cruz, his torture, his vision, and a return to his cell, ending as it opened with the framingvillancico — gives a key to Sametz's defining style. Each work creates its own world. In 1996, he created a work for Lehigh University Choral Arts for large chorus, orchestra of tabla and tampuras with Indian dancers and a giant puppet of Vishnu that rose amid flashpots and smoke to portray the Indian story of The Demon King. His Dudaryku – A Village Scene (2001), written for Chanticleer and The Princeton Singers, is an extended double-choir work that poignantly portrays the loss of a musician and musical life in a small Ukrainian town. These worlds, often based on myths, legends, or folk tales from across the globe, reflect in deeply personal ways on universal themes of love, loss, joy, mortality, and a transcendence of earthly cares.

In the 1980s and 90s, he made three trips around the world, traveling widely in Southeast Asia, where he was influenced by the musical traditions of Japan, Thailand, and Indonesia, returning with an extensive collection of musical instruments. In many of his works there is a sense of timelessness common to Buddhist practice and Christian prayer. The combined influences of Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, Impressionism and Asian music led to a style more based in timbre and overlapping melodic lines (at times aleatoric) than in harmonic motion.

Sametz's earliest piano works date from the age of six. During junior high and high school years in his native Westport, Connecticut, he began to write for choirs and chamber ensembles and undertook large-scale scoring of works for band and orchestra with encouragement of his teachers. Summer studies at the Amherst Music Center (Amherst, Maine) focused on piano, viola, voice, baritone horn and composition. He continued to compose during his undergraduate years at Yale University (BA, 1976), where his teachers included Robert Fountain (conducting) and Alejandro Planchart (early music). He spent his junior year at Yale abroad, studying conducting with Helmuth Rilling in Germany and composition with Sylvano Bussotti in Italy. He spent four summers at the Aspen Music School, studying choral and operatic conducting with Fiora Contino and voice with Jan DeGaetani. From 1976–79, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning the Masters and Doctor of Music Arts degrees in Choral Conducting. His primary teachers included Robert Fountain (choral conducting), Catherine Comet (orchestral conducting), Carlos Moses (opera conducting) and Bruce Benward (music theory).

Spiritual practices and world travel have contributed to Sametz's style. Raised in a Jewish tradition, he was hired in 1976 as assistant choirmaster and associate organist at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Norwalk, CT. He worked there much of his Yale undergraduate career, commuting from New Haven to Norwalk. At the same time he was being exposed Christian liturgy, he was beginning practice in Transcendental Meditation and would later study Vipassana and Zen meditation techniques. During his high school and college years, he traveled widely in Europe, studying composition briefly in Nice with Tony Aubin. During his graduate studies, he served on the musical staff of St. Paul's Church in Madison, Wisconsin, conducting a small choir devoted to performance of Gregorian chant reading from the Liber Usualis. Elements of Catholic liturgy and chant may be heard in several of Sametz's pieces: ¡O llama de amor viva! A Mystical Vision of St. John of the Cross (1987) is based largely on the Easter chant, Victimae Paschali laudes; Nevermore will the Wind (2002) and A Child’s Requiem (2014) use the Gregorian Requiem chant.

Steven Sametz (born 1954, Westport, Connecticut) is active as both conductor and composer. He has been hailed as "one of the most respected choral composers in America." Since 1979, he has been on the faculty of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he holds the Ronald J. Ulrich Chair in Music and is Director of Choral Activities and is founding director of the Lehigh University Choral Union. Since 1998, he has served as Artistic Director of the professional a cappella ensemble, The Princeton Singers. He is also the founding director of the Lehigh University Summer Choral Composers’ Forum. In 2012, he was named Chair of the American Choral Directors Association Composition Advisory Committee.

While still a student of Catherine Comet in graduate school, Sametz won the Redlands (CA) Orchestral Competition. He regularly conducts orchestral repertoire as well as major works for chorus and orchestra. Guest conducting appearances include the Taipei Philharmonic Foundation, the Berkshire Music Festival, the New York Chamber Symphony, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, CONCORA, Chanticleer and the Netherlands Radio Choir. At the Santa Fe Music Festival, he conducted his own works in a program entitled "Sametz conducts Sametz." He has conducted Chanticleer in the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 in New York (in collaboration with Lehigh Choral Arts) and San Francisco.