Sam Buttler (b. 1996) is a Welsh composer and educator. He was the recipient of the 2024 Paul Mealor Award for Young Composers from the Welsh Music Guild. He took part in the 2025 Composers Academy at the Cheltenham Festival, writing a new work for George Parris and The Carice Singers. He was also a member of the 2024 JAM on the Marsh Composer’s Residency, writing an opera based on the films of Derek Jarman with a libretto by Grahame Davies. In 2024, he also released his debut EP with Ensemble Matters, To the waters and the wild… for pierrot ensemble. In 2023, he was selected as part of the Peter Reynolds Composers Studio at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival, writing two new works for cello octet and violin and piano. He was also recently shortlisted for Composition: Wales 2022 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales with the piece Stones have memory here…, premiered in May 2022. He was chosen as one of the six composers for Tŷ Cerdd’s CoDI Lead scheme, working closely with a quartet of musicians from Paraorchestra on a new work, Chariots, Death, Jewels, and the Moon, premiered in March 2022.

He is currently Associate Composer with The Ripieno Players, and they premiered his concerto for guitar and strings, Water Portraits, in 2019. In 2019, he worked closely with the flautist Lily Caunt on a ceiling full of stars, a piece inspired by and recorded in The Monteath Mausoleum in the Scottish Borders. This work incorporates sound from the surroundings as well as within the mausoleum, and has since been published by Tetractys Publishing. A version for recorder was premiered by James Risdon as part of the RNS Moves Concert Series in 2020. He was selected as one of the six composers for Tŷ Cerdd’s 2020 CoDI Mentors Scheme, where he worked closely with the composer Freya Waley-Cohen. His music has been regularly used by the Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales in a variety of promotional material.  During the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, he also remotely recorded After This Manner for five voices and Extend the Dawn for solo oboe and electronics.

Sam is a keen music educator, having taught at secondary and higher education levels for the past seven years in composition and academic music. He has taught at a variety of levels, and has been a Graduate Teaching Assistant at King’s College, London since 2021. He specialises in helping people with composition and integrating it into their learning, as well as getting students to be confident in their music creation.

He graduated in 2017 with a BA in Music from St Peter’s College, Oxford. He then received a Distinction in his MMus in Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London with Aaron Holloway-Nahum, John Traill, and Chris Whiter in 2018. In 2020, he started a PhD in Composition at King’s College, London, supervised by Edward Nesbit and George Benjamin.

Read more about Sam in this interview with PRXLUDES.

Homepage photo and headshot by Marissa Deng