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

Shadows pass the morning ‘gins to break, 
The Starry floor, the watry shore


2022 · c. 28′
for amplified quartet, 12 orchestral musicians & fixed visual media


Private video available upon request

Programme note

This work began with a simple premise - that all of contemporary life, the good, the bad, the darkness and the light, could be found along the banks of the River Thames. Over the course of 18 months I walked the 120 miles of the tidal River, from Weybridge to the Isle of Grain, returning again and again with camera and microphone, observing - waiting. 

The Thames is the spine along which contemporary Britain functions, lined with heavy industry, heavier commerce, fulfilment centres, firing ranges, boat race rehearsals, dredging, luxury developments, wild horses, wilder graffiti and orchards of rotting fruit waiting for workers in a post-Brexit Kent. The River’s story is too vast, too grand, to be recounted in a single work - one must choose a position, a perspective, through which to view it. This work focusses on the relationship between the mythic, the profane, and the mundane - the River of Blake, of Turner & Milton, juxtaposed with the concrete reality of the River as an entity whose shifts in form exist on a geological, rather than human, timescale. 

The language of the work is in turn dramatic and literal, the performers one moment functioning as witches scrying the surface of the River to divinatory ends, another moment taking the form of the stones and pebbles caught within the flow of its waters. This tension, between the River as it appears in uneasy dreams and the River as it asserts itself on its own terms, propels the piece. It is finally broken when the River reaches its mouth, and becomes exuberant, despite itself. It leaps, it shouts the joy and violence of rejoining the sea. 

Performed by Distractfold Ensemble & 12 musicians from the BBC Philharmonic

Conducted by Mark Knoop

Performances

Distractfold Ensemble & the BBC Philharmonic
October 2022, Future Music #4, Manchester
Broadcast: New Music Show, BBC Radio 3, 21 September 2024

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


I would like to thank: Simon Webb, Kathy Jones, Stef Farr and all at the BBC Philharmonic, Distractfold Ensemble and Mark Knoop, PRiSM, the Centre for Practice & Research in Science and Music at the RNCM, and the technical and programming teams at the RNCM for facilitating this concert.