Rhian Samuel

ASCAP/Rudolf Nissim Prize (USA) for her choral/orchestral work, La Belle Dame sans Merci. A BIS CD containing her BBC-commissioned work for soprano and orchestra, Clytemnestra, was short listed for a Gramophone Award in 2020.^[4][5][6][7] As well as orchestral song-cycles (Clytemnestra and The White Amaryllis), she has written a large number of voice-and-piano cycles for major festivals including the Oxford Lieder Festival (Wildflower Songbook, to poems by Anne Stevenson), the Three Choirs Festival (A Swift Radiant Morning, to poems by WWI poet, Charles Sorley, the Fishguard Festival, UK (Cerddi Hynafol/Ancient Songs, to anonymous early Welsh texts), and the Ludlow English Song Weekend (The Moon and I, to poems by Anne Stevenson and Tabitha Hayward) and has written music for choirs including New College Choir (Oxford), the BBC Singers, and a number of American college choirs as well as her own choirs at Reading University and City University, London. She has also written about music: as co-editor of the New Grove (Norton) Dictionary of Women Composers,^[8] she has been prominent on issues concerning the reception of music by women. She has also written on the operas of Harrison Birtwistle; she was commissioned by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to write programme essays on both Gawain and The Minotaur and subsequently published diaries of their first productions.^[9] Amongst many CDs which contain her compositions, one entirely devoted to her chamber music, Light and Water, is issued on the Deux-Elles label, and another, Songs of Earth and Air, to her music for baritone and piano, on the Lorelt label. In 2006 she was awarded the Glyndŵr Award

City University, London in 1995, where she became Professor of Music in 1999 and is now Emeritus Professor. While there, she also supervised the research of post-graduate students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Later, she taught composition at Magdalen College, Oxford (2007–2016). Previously, she taught at the University of Reading (1984–95, as Head of Department, 1993–95) and at the St. Louis Conservatory, St. Louis.^[2]