Composer Rhian Samuel was born in Aberdare, Wales, in 1944 to a Welsh speaking, musical family. She has lived in Britain and the United States and currently divides her time between Aberdyfi (mid-Wales) and London. She writes orchestral music, chamber music and vocal and choral music and has worked with many of today's foremost classical artists. Her large orchestral works include Elegy-Symphony (St Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, conductor, 1981); Clytemnestra (1994) for soprano and orchestra, which was released on disc in 2020 and short-listed for a Gramophone Award, Dawnsiau'r Nant / Dances of the Stream (1999) and Tirluniau / Landscapes (2000), which was premiered at the BBC Millennium Proms in the Albert Hall by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Tadaaki Otaka, conductor. In the USA she was joint winner of the ASCAP-Rudolph Nissim Award, 1983, from The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, for her choral-orchestral work, La belle dame sans merci. In the UK she won first prize at the Greenwich Festival (1979) and has received subsequent accolades including the Glyndŵr Medal for services to the Arts in Wales and an Hon DMus from the University of Wales. To date around 140 of her works have been published.
Performances of many of Rhian's works are on CD and/or on YouTube. This website has links to the latter: to hear individual pieces, go to any of the pages listing works by instrumentation (1-12) and click on 'LISTEN'.