Sam is a performer of contemporary, experimental, and traditionally classical music.

As a devoted interpreter of contemporary music, Sam has commissioned and premiered over 25 works, and is active as both a soloist and chamber musician, performing regularly in diverse settings. As  Artistic Director and founding tenor-saxophone chair of Chicago-based Masso Quartet, Sam has commissioned and premiered 16 new works for saxophone quartet, engaged with over 3,500 students through educational outreach, held residencies at the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival and the Andrew Rafacz Gallery, and has presented over 25 concerts in five US states. Masso has been praised for their  “sensitivity and penchant for subtlety,” and their “rigorous timbral explorations” (Chicago Classical Review). Masso was also awarded third place at the 2022 North American Saxophone Alliance Quartet competition.

Sam is a versatile soloist, equally at home improvising with electronics as performing romantic transcriptions. Their solo practice foregrounds a language of saxophone multiphonics—exploring the capabilities of the saxophone as a producer of harmony, developing harmonic sonorities occasionally raucous and brash, but often delicate and fragile.

Sam’s solo project sits at the intersection of sound and image—twining together live saxophone performance with video art, written poetry, synthesizers, and electronic processing. In this creative work, Sam collects sustained sounds, layered textures, and small artifacts of beauty to explore language, coherence, feelings of loss, and assorted ways to cling to meaning. Sam’s coming solo set, “how to speak a foreign language” (for solo saxophone, synthesizers, live electronics, and four channel video) will be premiered in Geneva in June 2025.

Sam has performed internationally at various festivals and concert series, including:

Festival Archipel, Festival Antigel, New Music Chicago’s Impromptu Fest, The Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival, Access Contemporary Music’s Thirsty Ears Festival, the Yarn-Wire International Institute Festival, the Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference, Northwestern  University’s New Music Showcase, and more.