Nick Samuel is a composer, conductor, playwright and director based in Kent and Oxford. Growing up, Nick was drawn to both the world of contemporary music and theatre, and so has decided rather than pursuing one, to continue to work in both fields. On this website you can learn more about him and his artistic ambitions, and view his music and plays for purchase.

As a composer, Nick studied at the Junior department of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Rhiannon Randle. He draws on composers such as Khachaturian and Ginastera for his own works, and is always passionate about bringing attention to underrepresented composers. Nick’s work is generally of a neo-Romantic ilk, and in his music he aims to target the sweet spot between modernism and postmodernism, drawing on a number of sources such as symphonic tonal music, atonal music, jazz, and indigenous musics.

Highlights have included Heptalogue, for seven pianos, commissioned by St Anne’s College, and The Four Neomartyrs of Rethymnon for period instrument orchestra, commissioned by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Nick was also the director and organiser of the BRICKWORKS collective.

As a playwright, Nick has founded his own theatre production company in Oxford, Pharaoh Productions, in order to stage his original plays. He draws his influence on the importance of storytelling from all sorts of media, from video games to poetry. His writing style echoes Patrick Marber and Martin McDonagh for its deeply flawed and humanist characters, but also admires the absurdist comedy of Dario Fo.

Like McDonagh, the telling of the story is the core of his plays, which have their focus on moral ambivalence and dilemma. He doesn’t view his plays as having ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters, and instead, focusses on emotionally driven storytelling, flaws and all. His hope is that the audience leaves transfixed and hypnotised with irresolution.

Recent productions have included Your Funeral, based on Neutral Milk Hotel’s song ‘In the aeroplane over the sea’, and Ospedale, set in Venice’s Ospedale dell’a Pieta in 1710.