Composer Samantha Wolf and pianist Alex Raineri present an immersive, evening-length show for piano and live electronics. Featuring new, existing, and revised works from their 15-year collaborative history, this concert experience sees the roles of composer and performer intertwine and blur. The show culminates in the premiere of “Professor Good Trip”, a sonic and visual exploration of the ways that humans have sought to alter their psyches over millennia. Expanding upon Wolf’s and Raineri’s earlier collaborations, this piece immerses listeners in an ever-evolving soundscape incorporate acoustic and electroacoustic music, noise, narrative, and visual design.
About Samantha Wolf
Described as “haunting”, “enigmatic”, “inspired”, and “a force to be reckoned with”, the music of Australian-born, US-based composer Samantha Wolf blends the classical, contemporary, acoustic, and electroacoustic worlds, while being grounded in the notated tradition. Although she specializes in instrumental and electroacoustic music, her diverse catalogue includes orchestral, vocal, dramatic, electronic, radio, and multimedia works, and theatrical sound design.
Samantha has worked with many of Australia’s leading new music ensembles, including the Melbourne and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Offspring, Elision, The Song Company, Ensemble Liaison, the Horsley Williams Duo, Rubiks Collective, and Kupka’s Piano. Her music has been featured internationally at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (Germany), soundSCAPE Festival (Italy), Impuls Academy (Austria), Bang on a Can (USA), and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (USA), and locally at the Tilde New Music Festival, 2high Festival, the ANAM Set, and the Metropolis New Music Festival. Her music has been broadcast on ABC Classic FM, 3MBS, PBS and 4MBS, and featured by Making Waves, Partial Durations, Collective Soundwaves, and ABC’s New Waves podcast. As a sound designer, her work has been featured by Elm Shakespeare Company, the Yale Cabaret, and WYBCx New Haven.
Current and future projects include scores for two upcoming feature films, and a new work for Sandbox Percussion.
Samantha holds undergraduate degrees from the Queensland Conservatorium and the University of Melbourne, and two Masters degrees from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Martin Bresnick, David Lang, Chris Theofanidis, and Aaron Jay Kernis. At Darmstadt, she studied with Rebecca Saunders, Liza Lim, Ash Fure, and Cathy Milliken. She is the recipient of several major awards, including Rubiks Collective’s Pythia Prize, Ensemble Offspring’s Noisy Women Commission, and the University of Sydney’s Sue W Composition Prize. In 2023-2024, Samantha is Visiting Co-Artistic Director of the University of Alabama Contemporary Ensemble, Artist in Residence at the Longy School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, and the newest member of ICEBERG New Music Collective in New York.
Samantha is represented by the Australian Music Centre and APRA in Australia, and ASCAP in the United States.
About Alex Raineri
Hailed as a "born communicator" (The Australian), Alex Raineri lives on Jagera and Turrbal land in Magandjin (Brisbane, Queensland). He is active throughout Australia and Internationally as a piano recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, harpsichordist, composer, writer, producer, and educator.
Alex is an artist ambassador for Kawai Australia and is the Artistic Director of Brisbane Music Festival and live-music venue FourthWall Arts. International tours include America, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Finland, Netherlands, Asia, and New Zealand. Within Australia, Alex has been a featured artist at many major festivals, series, and venues.
A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Alex has commissioned over 80 works and has given over 140 World Premieres and over 170 Australian Premieres to date. As a concerto soloist he has appeared with the Queensland, Tasmanian, Darwin, and West Australian Symphony Orchestras, Camerata, Orchestra Victoria, Ensemble Q, and others. Radio broadcasts include BBC Radio 3, Radio NZ, California Capital Public Radio, Chicago’s WFMT, ABC Classic FM, and all of the Australian MBS Networks.
Collaborations with notable Australian and International artists include Andreas Ottensamer, Twoset Violin, eighth blackbird, ELISION, Asko|Schönberg, Lior, Sara Macliver, Mirusia, Natalie Clein, Natsuko Yoshimoto, Greta Bradman, Karin Schaupp, Lorina Gore, Amy Lehpamer, Claire Edwardes, Li Wei Qin, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Warwick Fyfe, Jack Liebeck, Kathryn Stott, Slava Grigoryan, Brett Dean, William Barton, Sophie Rowell, Jane Sheldon, Lisa Moore, Ensemble Offspring, Orava Quartet, and many others.
Major awards include winning the Australian National Piano Award, ANAM Concerto Competition, and Kerikeri International Piano Competition (New Zealand). Alex was a recipient of the Queensland Luminary Award (2021) in the APRA/AMCOS Art Music Awards and also received a Kranichsteiner Musikpries (2014) at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (Germany). In 2023 he was awarded a prestigious Churchill Fellowship.