Biography
Samantha Fernando (b.1984) is a British composer whose work is centred on an exploration of timbre, space, and the unfolding of sound. She is drawn to ideas of landscape, architecture, and place, approaching composition as the act of creating a space in sound, one that an audience can enter and inhabit. In recent years her music has moved towards a language that values clarity, directness, and openness: working with deliberately limited material, allowing music time to breathe, and attending with precision to gesture, texture, and form. Collaboration with performers is central to her practice, particularly in shaping sound worlds that respond to the physicality of instruments and the acoustic space in which music is heard.
Samantha has worked with numerous ensembles including the Philharmonia Orchestra, BCMG, Riot Ensemble, The BBC Singers, LOD Muziektheater (Ghent), Silbersee Vocal Ensemble (Amsterdam), The Crossing (USA) and the London Sinfonietta. Her music has been performed at festivals including Aldeburgh Music, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Sounds New, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, York Late Music and the Oxford Lieder Festival.
In 2013 she was awarded an RPS Composition Prize and was commissioned to write a new work for the Philharmonia Orchestra as part of the Music of Today series. Her music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and released on NMC and Coviello Classics. In 2018 she was commissioned to write Formations, celebrating the 50th birthday of the London Sinfonietta, premiered at the Royal Festival Hall and conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.
In 2021 Samantha was a finalist for the Arts Foundation Futures Awards, and saw the opening of Current, Rising, a hyper-reality opera directed by Netia Jones, designed by Jo Scotcher, and produced by the Royal Opera House and Figment Productions. Her first chamber opera, glass human, a collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Melanie Wilson, premiered at Glyndebourne and toured the UK in Autumn 2022, directed by Lucy Bailey.
Recent commissions include Balconies for solo (multi-tracked) violin, written for Olivia de Prato's album Panorama (New Focus Recordings, 2023); Sound Inhabitants for large ensemble, commissioned and premiered by the London Sinfonietta (2023); Wintering, commissioned by Wigmore Hall and performed by Manchester Collective and the Marian Consort, premiering at Wigmore Hall and touring nationally in December 2025; and Exoplanets, commissioned by the City of London Sinfonia, premiered at Hackney Empire (2025).
Samantha studied Composition at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Oxford. She is an Honorary Research Fellow in Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London.
(Photo credit: Isabelle Rose Povey)