Sam Wells is a musician and artist based in Philadelphia, whose work often invokes a heightened sense of the entanglements of space, air, breath, and body. Manifesting as music composition, performance, and improvisation, as well as multimedia performance and installation, his work is experientially substantial. It is rooted in the humanity of breath and highlights our interrelations with the cosmic, terrestrial, social, and internal spaces that surround us.
Sam is a trumpeter and improviser who has performed around the world and is a member of SPLICE Ensemble, Aeroidio, and the Miller/Vidiksis/Wells trio. He has also performed with Contemporaneous, Metropolis Ensemble, Nate Wooley, TILT Brass, the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, and the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra. Sam has recorded on the Scarp Records, New Amsterdam/Nonesuch, New Focus Records, SEAMUS, and Ravello Recordings labels.
As a composer, Sam creates acoustic, electroacoustic, and electronic works, often incorporating multimedia elements. His works have been performed throughout the United States and internationally. He is a recipient of a 2016 Jerome Fund for New Music award, and his work “stringstrung” is the winner of the 2016 Miami International Guitar Festival Composition Competition. As an avid collaborator, Sam has written for theater and dance productions, as well as for many notable performers of contemporary music such as HOCKET, SPLICE Ensemble, Maya Bennardo, Dana Jessen, Vicki Ray, Lin Faulk, Kenken Gorder, and Will Yager.
Technology is a deep through line of Sam’s practice, and he is active as a music technologist. Sam is a Cycling ’74 Max Certified Trainer and organizes the Max Meetup Philadelphia event series. He runs Scarp Records, a record label dedicated to highlighting the experimental and improvisational practices of performer/composers.
Sam currently serves as the Member At Large for the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), as well as a board member for SPLICE Music, the parent organization of SPLICE Institute, Festival, and Ensemble, dedicated to the performance, creation, and development of music for performers and electronics.
Sam holds degrees in both performance and composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, graduate degrees in Trumpet Performance and Computer Music Composition from Indiana University, and a doctoral degree from the California Institute of the Arts. Sam is an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at Temple University.