David S. Sampson

David S. Sampson

David Sampson (b. 1951, Charlottesville, Virginia) is a prolific composer and trumpet player currently living in New Jersey. He is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Colonial Symphony Orchestra (1998–2007) and plays with them as well.

David Sampson received a 2006 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has also received major grants from the NEA, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Barlow Endowment, Jerome Foundation, Cary Trust, and the Dodge Foundation, among others. He holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music, Hunter College, Manhattan School of Music, and the Écoles d'Art Américaines, where his teachers included Karel Husa, Henri Dutilleux and John Corigliano in composition; and Gerard Schwarz, Gilbert Johnson, Robert Nagel, and Raymond Mase in instrumental lessons for trumpet. His music is published by Editions BIM, Cantate Press and David Sampson Music. He has served on the Board of the Composers Guild of New Jersey and the Advisory Board of the Bergen Foundation.

He also teaches trumpet and conducts an orchestra in the Randolph, New Jersey school district. He is fondly known to his students as “Doc”, and they inspired his Wind Ensemble piece, Moving Parts. Every year, near the beginning of the school year, Sampson composes the audition piece that the Randolph trumpet players practice to determine their seating.

His older brother, Bill Sampson, was one of the many killed in the Greensboro massacre in 1979. The grief he felt following the event affected much of his work, particularly In Memoriam: W.E.S., which is “an actual description of the events (Sampson) saw on TV.”