Sam Dunscombe is an audio engineer, sound artist, performer, and composer. Her interest in the ways music allows for novel experiences of time has led to explorations in a wide variety of areas: from studio engineering to field recording; spectralism and just intonation to free improv; new complexity to free jazz; computer music to wandelweiser. She has presented work for acousmonium at INA GRM and Archipel Geneva; conducted the opening concert of Maerz Musik in 2019 and performed Eliane Radigue’s music at the Berlin Philharmonie with Klangforum Wien and ONCEIM; performed as a member of Oren Ambarchi’s Carpe Diem; is a founding member of Berlin’s Harmonic Space Orchestra; worked as the archivist for Horatiu Radulescu; and more.
As a performer of notated repertoire Sam has worked with composers including Cat Lamb, Anthony Pateras, Taku Sugimoto, Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana Maria Avram, Richard Barret, Tashi Wada, and others. As an improviser, Sam has performed with artists including Jim O’Rourke, Toshimaru Nakamura, Seijiro Murayama, ONCEIM, Madoka Kouno, Oren Ambarchi, Julia Holter, and Joe Talia. And as a sound technician, Sam has developed systems for sound synthesis, diffusion, and recording to be used for works by Jacob Ullmann, Anthea Caddy, and Michiko Ogawa, and others.
Sam is an avid field recordist: Outside Ludlow / Desert Disco (LP, Black Truffle, 2021) combines field recordings with audio taken from scraps of 1/4″ tape found tangled around a cactus in the Mojave Desert. A second album, Two Forests / Oceanic (LP, Black Truffle, 2023), uses field recordings and rational tuning practice to reimagine the music used for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy sessions. Alongside these hybrid works, Sam is also engaged in more traditional acoustic ecology practice, in particular an ongoing ultra-large-scale field recording work “California Grid.”
Sam was awarded a Doctor of Musical Arts from UC San Diego in 2018 with a thesis exploring Horatiu Radulescu’s clarinet works. Sam has worked as the archivist to Radulescu’s estate since 2018, and has performed his works around the world. In June 2022, Sam released Horatiu Radulescu: Plasmatic Works Vol. 1 on Mode Records. Focussing on Radulescu’s early spectral music for winds and electronics, this album is the first in a three part series.
Inspired by her engagement with both Romanian spectralism and environmental sound, Sam is currently developing works of “Mass Plasma Synthesis,” a technique that weaves (tens of) thousands of sine-waves in complex harmonic tapestries. Studies in this methodology can be heard on Bandcamp, and the results of this work have been presented internationally.
Since 2019, Sam worked as a freelance Tonmeisterin across Germany, which allowed her to combine her knowledge of contemporary music theory and performance practice with her love acoustics and phonography. And since 2024, Samantha serves as “a high-level research supporter and practitioner who serves the UCSD Music Department faculty and advanced student constituency as an expert in all aspects of recording and live audio” – working as both an in-house record producer and archivist, and overseeing the documentation of all the music department’s public events.
Sam is a member of several musical groups, including Berlin’s Harmonic Space Orchestra, the Australian performer-composer trio Golden Fur (together with James Rushford and Judith Hamann), Oren Ambarchi’s Carpe Diem, and duo projects with Michiko Ogawa, Rebecca Lane, Jules Reidy, and others.
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LYMPHOMA AWARENESS
I am a proud survivor of aggressive non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I was diagnosed and treated with curative immuno-chemotherapy in 2023, achieving full remission in that same year. Being in remission for over two years, I am now considered cured. Thank you to all those who showed their support!