Saman Samadi is a Persian-American composer, performer, musicologist, and philosopher whose work examines the ontological and aesthetic conditions of sound through composition, analysis, and listening. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where his research situated Persian musical practice within contemporary philosophical discourse. His career spans nearly two decades, encompassing over 130 works across acoustic, electroacoustic, and multimedia forms, alongside ensemble direction and performance in New York and Cambridge, and a growing body of scholarly publications that approach composition as a mode of philosophical inquiry.
His compositional practice draws on microtonal modal structures, prosodically derived rhythmic systems, and a notational approach that reconsiders the relationship between sound, time, and form. Engaging Persian classical music, poetic metrics, and calligraphic aesthetics, he has developed original methods such as Persian prosodic composition and modal-rhizomatic structuring, treating composition as a site of conceptual and philosophical investigation.
His doctoral dissertation, Becoming Persian Music: A Poststructuralist Approach to Composition, repositions Persian musical practices within contemporary philosophical discourse, proposing a model of compositional thought grounded in sonic differentiation, temporal multiplicity, and the materiality of language. This work establishes the foundation for his ongoing research at the intersection of philosophy and musicology, where composition functions as a means of interrogating the conceptual conditions of musical experience. His academic writing includes publications in journals such as Perspectives of New Music, with forthcoming work in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. He has also presented invited lectures and research papers at the Royal Academy of Music, City University of London, the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) Study Group on Applied Ethnomusicology conference, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Manhattan School of Music, as well as multiple conferences hosted by the University of Cambridge.
His compositions have been performed at institutions and festivals worldwide, including the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, New York University, Royal Academy of Music London, Lincoln Center New York, Janáček Academy (Brno), NeoArte Festival (Poland), Hanyang University (Seoul), Queen’s University Belfast, the Academy of Performing Arts (Prague), MuMa (France), the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Cambridge Festival, and the Tehran Electroacoustic Music Festival. His music has been interpreted by performers including Jonathan Powell, Jared Redmond, Darragh Morgan, Miranda Cuckson, Linda Wetherill, Junya Makino, Mehrdad Gholami, Kristin Barone-Samadi, Anna Hashimoto, Austin Wulliman, Jaram Kim, Nicholas Swett, Samuel Stoll, and many others.
From 2013 to 2020, Samadi was an actively involved in New York’s experimental music scene, founding and directing the Saman Samadi Quintet, Apām Napāt Trio, and Aži Trio. He served as Assistant Director of The Firehouse Space, an influential venue for experimental music, contemporary classical performance, and multimedia work. In 2021, he founded and continues to direct the Cambridge University Experimental Music Ensemble (CueMe), which continues to serve as a platform for experimental performance and interdisciplinary artistic research.
Samadi currently teaches at Abbey College Cambridge and has served as an Academic Supervisor for the Music in Contemporary Societies course at the University of Cambridge. He has supervised undergraduate students across multiple colleges, guiding projects on composition, sound studies, musical aesthetics, ethnomusicology, and performance analysis. He is also President and Chair of Studies in Composition and Theory at Conservatoire One Cambridge, an independent conservatoire he co-founded in 2013.
He holds a BA in Music Performance and an MA in Composition from the University of Tehran, where he studied under Alireza Mashayekhi—himself a student of Hanns Jelinek, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. He has undertaken further study in artistic research at the Orpheus Institute and KU Leuven, as well as in philosophy at the University of Queensland. His early studies in Mathematics and Physics at NODET (National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents), a highly selective Iranian institution for students with advanced aptitude in mathematics and science, inform the structural and analytical dimensions of his compositional thinking.
His work have been recognised with awards and fellowships, including the Artist Diploma from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2015), First Prize at the Counterpoint-Italy International Composition Competition (2012), and selection for the NYCEMF (2012). He was the recipient of the prestigious Dr Grantham Scholarship at the University of Cambridge.
He continues to develop a body of work in which composition, performance, and philosophical inquiry converge, with a particular focus on the philosophical conditions of musical experience and understanding.
