Sam Salem

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Solo works

Waves of crashing blackness (2024), 32′for solo piano, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Way Up & The Way Down (2023), 38′for solo percussion, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Bury Me Deep (2022), 30′for solo trombone, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
THIS IS FINE (2021), 7′for solo cello & fixed audiovisual media
The Raft Breaks (2019), 20′for solo violin, amplified objects, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media

Chamber works

Everyone No-one (2026), 60′for violin, cello, trombone, bass clarinet, ondes martenot, percussion, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Museum of the Lowest Place (2026), 30′for voice, electric guitar, violin, double bass, prepared piano, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Of Darkness 1 (2024), 9′for voice / flute, electric guitar, cello, percussion & fixed audiovisual media
Shadows pass the morning ‘gins to break, The Starry floor, the watry shore (2022), 28′for amplified quartet, 12 orchestral musicians & fixed visual media
Midlands (2019), 48′for voice, electric guitar, keyboards, string trio, bass clarinet, amplified objects, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Tower (2019), 15′for electric guitar, cello, percussion, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Lovers (2017), 9′for string quintet, 2 object operators, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Great Inundation (2017), 14′for 3 object operators, cello, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Untitled Valley of Fear (2016), 12′for 3 object operators, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Not one can pass away (2015), 11′for 2 object operators, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media

Acousmatic works (selected)

Himlen Var (2015), 11′12-channel acousmatic
Too late, too far (2014), 7′stereo acousmatic
The Fall (2014), 30′stereo acousmatic
Dérive (2013), 15′stereo acousmatic
The Sun Warms The Memory (2011), 12′stereo acousmatic
Everyone No-one (2026), 60′for violin, cello, trombone, bass clarinet, ondes martenot, percussion, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Museum of the Lowest Place (2026), 30′for voice, electric guitar, violin, double bass, prepared piano, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Waves of crashing blackness (2024), 32′for solo piano, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Of Darkness 1 (2024), 9′for voice / flute, electric guitar, cello, percussion & fixed audiovisual media
The Way Up & The Way Down (2023), 38′for solo percussion, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Bury Me Deep (2022), 30′for solo trombone, electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Shadows pass the morning ‘gins to break, The Starry floor, the watry shore (2022), 28′for amplified quartet, 12 orchestral musicians & fixed visual media
THIS IS FINE (2021), 7′for solo cello & fixed audiovisual media
Midlands (2019), 48′for voice, electric guitar, keyboards, string trio, bass clarinet, amplified objects, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Raft Breaks (2019), 20′for solo violin, amplified objects, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Tower (2019), 15′for electric guitar, cello, percussion, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Lovers (2017), 9′for string quintet, 2 object operators, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
The Great Inundation (2017), 14′for 3 object operators, cello, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Untitled Valley of Fear (2016), 12′for 3 object operators, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Not one can pass away (2015), 11′for 2 object operators, performative electronics & fixed audiovisual media
Himlen Var (2015), 11′12-channel acousmatic
Too late, too far (2014), 7′stereo acousmatic
The Fall (2014), 30′stereo acousmatic
Dérive (2013), 15′stereo acousmatic
The Sun Warms The Memory (2011), 12′stereo acousmatic

Releases

London Triptych (2021)dFolds · digital & cassette
The New Unusual (2021)dFolds · digital
© Sam Salem 2026

Bury Me Deep


2022 · c. 30′
for solo trombone, electronics & fixed audiovisual media



Programme note

Bury Me Deep began with a conversation in the summer of 2016. It is an excavation of a location, a character. In this case, the site in question is Weston Olencki, their beginnings, their talents, their energies. 

In 2018 I travelled to Spartanburg, South Carolina, to gather material. 

We saw abandoned lots, A LOT of Freemasons lodges, EVEN MORE churches of every denomination (some imaginary) crammed into every conceivable (and inconceivable) space, kudzu on telegraph poles, kudzu on mills, kudzu on street-lamps, kudzu on kudzu. 

We heard the electric crackle of cicadas in the summer, the cent-perfect close-harmonies of unnervingly high-quality karaoke, the percussive impacts of football practice, bodies crashing against bodies, the performative solemnity of professional sports as seemingly eternal, and of the land, as the flows of the local rivers. 

We felt the air, the heat, the moisture, pushing our bodies to hallucination, rendering us superstitious, the creep of gothic horror around every corner. I felt Weston’s complex relationship with this small, pleasant town, and understood it: we share the need to escape, at maximum velocity, from our points of origin. 

In December 2019, I invited Weston to the RNCM to begin a different kind of archive. We spent 4 days exploring their relationship with their instrument, creating a catalogue of Weston’s dexterity. We created an AI doppelgänger, a breathless, uncanny cipher, that could “play” the trombone without understanding, without signs of tiring. 

From the beginning, I had envisaged Bury Me Deep as a kind of séance, a conversation between a living trombonist and a “dead” trombone (provided in this instance by Weston’s high-school trombone repairman). The hanging, “dead” trombone came to re-embody the disembodied acousmatic sound-world of this project: a voice from beyond the frame of the piece. 

The final work moves “From Sunrise” “To Sunset”, from the present to the past, from snapshots of South Carolina to AI-mediated footage of a Drum Corps competition performance - this ghostly choreography, this mesmeric spectacle, is like a dream on a humid summer night. In the end, the ghosts, now speaking to us openly and directly, tell us to live - for us and for them.

Performances

Weston Olencki
30 November 2022, Iklectik Art Lab, London
11 May 2023, KM 28, Berlin
28 August 2023, La Sala Rossa, Montreal
30 August 2023, Bains Publics, Rimouski
31 August – 3 September 2023, Grande Rencontre des Arts Médiatiques, Percé
5 September 2023, Charlotte St. Arts Centre, Fredericton
7 September 2023, Goodrobot, Mousetrap, Halifax
9 September 2023, Moncton University, Moncton
16 February 2024, Electric Spring Festival, Huddersfield