Sam Scheibe
Quarantunes
Composer | Conductor | Vocalist
Sam Scheibe is an American composer, conductor, and vocalist whose music is driven by wordplay, harmony, and groove. His influences draw from his experiences as a performer in traditional choral music, jazz, rock, and pop a cappella. Sam’s original music has been performed and commissioned by ensembles across the United States and the United Kingdom including Frost Chorale, Seraphour, Laude, the Catholic Sacred Music Project, Anchorae, West Jersey Chamber Music Society, Choir Next Door, and University of Aberdeen Chamber Choir. His music has been professionally recorded by GIA Choral Works and featured on EWTN. His compositions are published by GIA publications, Walton, Gentry Music, and See-A-Dot Music.
Sam is in demand as a conductor, vocalist, and clinician. He has sung with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the New World Symphony. As an active performer, he sings as a bass-baritone with professional ensembles including Seraphic Fire, the Spoleto Festival Chorus, the Catholic Sacred Music Project, and Choir Next Door.
Sam is currently the interim Director of the Penn Glee Club at the University of Pennsylvania, and will be a Visiting Instructor of Music and Interim Director of Choirs at Centre College in Danville, KY starting January, 2025. Sam also works as a Bass-Baritone at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill.
Sam currently lives in Vorhees, NJ. He is an avid Dungeons and Dragons player, matcha enthusiast, and loves turn-based strategy games. His favorite color is purple, and his all-time favorite band is Coldplay.
Featured Works
Journey
Frost Chorale
Journey is work inspired by the idea of semantic satiation, or when a word is repeated so often it loses its meaning. A refrain altered from the South African song, Hamba Nathi (Come, Walk with Us), is repeated as various solos enter over top. After enough repetition, the phrase begins to fall apart entirely, with voices only singing a fragment of each word.
Sysiphized (coming soon)
Sam Scheibe, James Harris, John Franek, CAS Music Productions
Sysiphized is a studio work for Baritone, Piano, and Recorded Sounds. The work tells the story of Sysiphus through textless loops and textures, loosely based off text from Andrew Bird's "Sysiphus".
"Sisyphus peered into the mist
A stone's throw from the precipice, paused
Did he jump or did he fall as he gazed into the maw of the morning mist?
Did he raise both fists and say, 'To hell with this,' and just let the rock roll?"
-Andrew Bird, "Sysiphus" from My Finest Work Yet
