Sam Meadahl, the composer.
Sam Meadahl is a Vancouver based composer, guitarist, and instrument builder pursuing the bachelors of fine arts in music/composition at Simon Fraser University. Ironically, his initial intention was not to study composition but studying guitar performance. He began taking the guitar performance program at KPU, yet never identified with neither the school nor the program, feeling that he was not getting what he wanted. Thus, two years into the program he transfers to SFU and right from the beginning he feels like home.
His compositions since then has been inspired by a number of real-life situations and the field school program in Berlin is one of them (the others you should ask himself!). Not only being exposed to a new culture which is miles away from North America is a significant aspect of it but also being in one of the most powerful contemporary art scenes, is without any doubt a great experience for a contemporary composer like Sam.
Sam does not reject the idea of how having an artistic life can be lonely sometimes, specially for a composer. However, according to him there are many ways to overcome that loneliness; reaching to peers and asking them for opinions is one of the main ones.
Like most of the other emerging artists, he has had other jobs beside being an artists — there are bills needed to be paid! For the last seven years he has been a golf course maintenance where he gets to golf for free, yet, he has only used this privilege twice!
And if you are wondering whether he always sticks to one theme for his compositions or not, well you should know that he does not. As his artistic process is constantly evolving , his themes and ideas do so as well. He sometimes is inspired by the nature surrounding him and sometimes by watching videos on YouTube. He not only composes for acoustic instruments and found objects but greatly incorporates electronic music in his compositions. Sam is constantly developing his compositions further and creating more and more instruments with more complicated set ups.
