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 residencies at Zion National Park and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and the New York Youth Symphony's Jon Deak First Music Commission, Sam Wu also received Harvard's Robert Levin Prize and Juilliard's Palmer Dixon Prize.
Sam’s collaborations span five continents: the orchestras of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Minnesota, Columbus, Melbourne, Tasmania, Macao, and Shanghai, Carnegie Hall, Cabrillo Festival, Sydney International Piano Competition, Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Lontano, Parker, Argus, ETHEL, Romer, and icarus Quartets, conductors Osmo Vänskä, Marin Alsop, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and Benjamin Northey, and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei.
From Melbourne, Australia, Sam holds degrees from Harvard, Juilliard, and Rice. He is 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.