Santa Clara University

Samuel Pluta

Samuel Pluta is a composer of acoustic, electronic and mixed media works.  His music has been featured on festivals and concerts throughout the world including ICMC, Seamus, and Spring in Havana.  Along with other projects, his electronic duo, Ready for Japan, recently completed their first ep, entitled Ready for Japan.  Samuel is a graduate of Santa Clara University, where he received his BA in Music in 2001.  He holds a Masters degree in Music from the University of Texas and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham in the UK.  Samuel spends his summers at the Walden School, a summer camp for young composers aged 10-18, where he is on faculty.

PROGRAM NOTE:

Five and a half years ago, after my Junior composition recital at Santa Clara, Teresa McCollough came back stage and said, "I have to go, but why don't you write a piece for me that I could play next year."  For a  21 year old composer who had started writing music only two years prior, this was a thrill.  It took me all summer to write my piece for piano, flute, and percussion entitled "Scherzo."  That fall, Dr. M decided that we would put on a New Music Festival in February, and not only would my piece be played, but I would also help organize the festival and perform "Clapping Music" on it.  Yikes!  That first New Music Festival was one of the most important moments of my undergraduate life at Santa Clara.  I learned so much by going to rehearsals of pieces like "Ancient Voices of Children" and "Quartet for the End of Time" and performing "Clapping Music" and "General William Booth Enters into Heaven."  Last summer, when Dr. M asked me to write a piece for her for piano and electronics ("I'm going electric!" she said) to be played on this year's NMF, I had to say yes.  The result is "noise + mobile."  When starting the piece, as usual, I had no idea what to do.  Then I realized that all I had been listening to for the last six months or so was free jazz and underground electronica.  The first half of this piece is an attempt to fuse those two ideas.  The second half is a deconstruction of the first half, with the ideas put into a slow rotating mobile that was actually there all along.

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