Sam Dunscombe
Phone: 858-534-8868
Office: CPMC 173
Email: s1dunscombe@ucsd.edu
Sam (Samantha) Dunscombe, DMA [she/her], Recording Engineer
Sam (Samantha) Dunscombe is an audio engineer, sound artist, performer, and composer. Her interest in the ways music allows for novel experiences of time has led to explorations in a wide variety of areas: from studio engineering to field recording; spectralism and just intonation to free improv; new complexity to free jazz; computer music to wandelweiser. She has presented work for acousmonium at INA GRM and Archipel Geneva; conducted the opening concert of Maerz Musik in 2019 and performed Eliane Radigue's music at the Berlin Philharmonie with Klangforum Wien and ONCEIM; and worked with composers including Cat Lamb, Anthony Pateras, Mary Jane Leach, Iancu Dumitrescu, Oren Ambarchi; and much more. From 2017-2023, Sam worked as the archivist to the estate of Romanian spectral composer Horatiu Radulescu, revising his scores for re-publication, digitising and remastering audio recordings for commercial release, and performing as both an electronic musician and a clarinetist at festivals throughout Europe. Sam is a founding member of Berlin's Harmonic Space Orchestra, and continues to work closely with the group on recording, electro-acoustic, and archival projects.
Sam has worked in audio technology for many years - starting out as a computer musician and live sound engineer, she quickly fell in love with recorded sound. She has produced and engineered records for Mode, Black Truffle, Another Timbre, Hospital Hill, Editions Wandelweiser, Kairos, New World, Ftarri, and Modern Love; is an avid field recordist (documenting soundscapes from the Amazon Rainforest through Australian deserts, the forests of Northern Europe, the cities of Asia and North America, and much more); contributed MaxMSP programming for countless composers and ensembles in Australia, Europe, the USA, and Japan; and has most recently become interested in the fabrication of systems for phonographic capture and playback (with a particular interested in designing and building speaker arrays). Since 2019, Sam worked as a freelance Tonmeisterin across Germany, which allowed her to combine her knowledge of contemporary music theory and performance practice with her love acoustics and phonography. And since 2024, Samantha serves as "a high-level research supporter and practitioner who serves the UCSD Music Department faculty and advanced student constituency as an expert in all aspects of recording and live audio" - working as both an in-house record producer and archivist, and overseeing the documentation of all the music department's public events.