(Credit: The Riker Brothers)

LA-based composer and baritone Samuel Siskind is a high school senior whose music has garnered significant international recognition. He is a winner of the 2024 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and is also an LA Phil Composing Fellow, under the direction of acclaimed composer Andrew Norman.

His music has been played at Carnegie Hall and Royce Hall and he recently completed the Juilliard Summer Composition Program. Siskind recently recorded his first album “Awake” in New York alongside the Fourth Wall Ensemble and baritone Johnathan McCullough. 

OperaWire spoke to Siskind about his early successes and the process of recording his first studio album.

OperaWire: You just finished your first recording. What was that like and how did that come about?

Samuel Siskind: About two years ago, I was a principal in the National Youth Opera Academy up in Vail, Colorado, and I had the pleasure of meeting John McCullough. And it came up over my two weeks there that I was a composer, and he wanted to hear my music, so I ended up sharing it with him.

And one thing led to another, and back in May of this year, we made the album. And it was just so incredible working with him and with Fourth Wall.

OW: What is the experience of going into a recording studio as opposed to having your piece performed live?

SS: It is really different. You have to be listening to such minute details because it’s something that you’re going to hear and everyone’s going to hear as a representation for the song or for the whole album. So it really is a different mindset and you have to think, “Well, should we take this again?”

A performance is a living, breathing thing. Every performance is different, and that’s great, but you want to have the best of all the qualities together. And it can be stressful, but it can also be really fun.

OW: How was the collaboration with the Fourth Wall Ensemble? What did you learn from collaborating with them?

SS: Everyone at Fourth Wall was just so incredibly kind. As a younger composer, there’s a lot I have to learn, and they were just so helpful in giving me feedback. They’re just such a high-caliber group. Sometimes just giving me a chance and trying what I have on the page which might look difficult, ended up having a really interesting and fun result.

So it was a collaboration in which sometimes they gave me a note, and it was a very exciting process for me.

OW: You met John McCullough as a student, and now you’re working with him as a collaborator. How does the experience change between being a student and then going in and working now as a collaborator?

SS: John’s an awesome guy. I think he treats everyone as a collaborator. It doesn’t matter if you’re 12 years old or if you’re an esteemed member of any musical community. I think that he really treats everyone as an equal collaborator, and that’s really an incredible environment to be in.

OW: How do you think that your working relationship has evolved since being at the opera camp?

SS: He was always so great of a collaborator. I think it’s just a more casual relationship. Now we can just speak our mind about any number of things on the album, whether it’s when we’re producing something. We’re a very laid-back producing team.

OW: Tell me about the piece and what inspired you to write it.

SS: So one of the pieces on the album is a choral cycle called “Release.” It was originally intended to just be one movement and it ended up being three.

I started writing it during the height of COVID and it was the first movement about separation and the consequences of our mental health.

So I wrote the first movement as sort of a dream of when we get back together, “we will soar and we will create and it’ll be so incredible.”

I loved writing that first movement so much that I ended up continuing the piece and I wrote the second movement. That movement is about a rainstorm, but it can mean so many things metaphorically. And then I was commissioned by Suzi Digby to write the final movement for her Golden Bridge ensemble right as I was starting to think, I need a third movement. So it all sort of came together just perfectly.

OW: What are the challenges of writing a choral piece? What have you learned from composing a piece of this scale?

SS: There definitely are a lot of key takeaways about understanding writing for choir, better understanding the human voice, and especially what vowels you want to place on certain registers. You also have to know what different members of the choir need.

Then there is voice leading which was a very interesting thing because you want to be able to cue someone. Some of this music is very jazzy, and it’s not your traditional harmonic language. So cueing someone, hiding a note in there somewhere so they can listen and hear what they need to come in on, I think, was a very important thing that I learned.

OW: Tell me about your recent Carnegie Hall debut. What was that experience like?

SS: It was one of the most incredible moments of my life. It was completely thanks to the National Children’s Chorus, and for believing in me to make that happen and working with me to get that score out to the kids all across the country.

Walking on that stage was truly a magical experience, something I’ll never, ever forget.

You just finished a summer program at Juilliard. How has that experience changed the way you approach composition?

SS: Yeah. That experience was also just incredible. Getting to know so many of my peers was something I didn’t have enough experience with. To know other people my age who are also going through the same struggles in writing is something. The program really immersed me in so many different styles of music that I do think it’s going to have a great effect on my style. I have so many new ideas for new types of pieces I can write just based on different experiences I had at the program.

So I think it will have a big impact on finding my voice.

OW: What are you working on right now? Is there something that you are excited to show people in the next year?

SS: Sure. Right now, I’m working on a baritone song cycle that I’m writing for myself to perform.

So I think that’ll be really exciting, and I hope to find the right venue to premiere that piece.

In November, Choral Arts Initiative is going to do the live world premiere of “Release.” So I’m really looking forward to that.

OW: With the album being released on August 29, what is the plan for the album? How will you celebrate?

SS: Honestly, it’s kind of funny. My dad had got tickets to the Hollywood Bowl to go see the LA Phil in concert on the same day. I invited my longtime composition professor, and we planned this completely before we picked that date.

So I think it’s really funny that the professor who got me to start composing in the first place is going to go to the Hollywood Bowl with me and I think that’ll be a really fun and reflective experience.

OW: What do you hope audiences will take away?

SS: Well, I think a really distinctive thing about me is that I always write my own text, and that’s how I start. Every one of my vocal pieces I write a text, and that’s kind of the road map for the piece. Each one of my pieces is its own complete emotional story and it’s a storyline that doesn’t continue, but it’s a whole story.

I think that the key takeaway at the end of each one of my pieces is that we can do anything and that music connects us all and that if we have a dream to do something that can be accomplished if we work together.

OW: How long does it take to write a text? What is that process?

SS: For me, I am a grade-A procrastinator. So I’ll have an idea for a piece for weeks if not months, and I will be thinking about ideas and thinking and thinking, and then all of a sudden I’ll be like, “well, I really need to do this.”

And somehow I get my texts done. One of the pieces on the album I got done in five minutes. I just wrote what I felt. I’d been reflecting on it in my head, and finally, I was on a hike out in nature, and it just came to me.

And once I have the text, then it’s even harder because you have to start setting that to music. And that first 10 seconds of the piece, for me, is the most difficult part of composing because you have to get something that grabs the audience and doesn’t give away the whole piece. So it’s the text and those first 10 seconds that I struggle with. But it’s also a really exciting experience when it all comes together.

OW: Who’s the first person you show your work to when you have something? Or do you show your work to anybody?

SS: Yeah. It’s a combination. The first person I show my work to is my mom and she’s not a composer, but she has a very good musical ear. So I show it to her, and I get the sense by her facial expression in her mood, what she thinks about it. And if it’s okay, if it passes the mom test, then I’ll show it to my teacher.

And if my teacher’s like, “You know what, this is okay,” then I’ll share it with more people.

OW: Once you have shown it to your teacher, What comes next? What does this discussion with your teacher look like?

SS: Well, I think that with each teacher that I’ve had, it’s different. My main teacher Dr. Ian Krouse at UCLA is incredible. My main experience with him is, that I’ll show him my piece, and what he’ll do that I find most helpful is he could give me a history lesson on one of the techniques I use and then I’ll really understand more about how I can use that in the future.

He’ll help me make something maybe easier to read and guide me to put something in double time which will help people count it better when they’re trying to sight read, So it’s really about how we make this piece succeed in a performance environment.