Samuel S Signer

Samuel in his bedroom holding a shofar, Summer 2019.

My philosophy when creating my music is to be both objectively and subjectively sincere.

To be objectively sincere, my finished piece has to sound like music and thus has to be compelling to the listener. Whether they are anywhere between moved or disturbed, is entirely out of my hands. My objective is to create music that draws from my own personal experience and, in a way, open an unspoken and subliminal dialogue within each listener.

To be subjectively sincere, my music is ultimately foremost driven by emotion. Intellect takes the front seat when it comes to editing and fine-tuning any harmonic and rhythmic details, but the overall mood, pacing, and story that I tell through sound is entirely rooted in emotional catharsis.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

My creative product is best realized when I am working with a concept or some sort of guiding parameter. That could be anything from a chosen theme or an emotion that I am trying to exorcise; in the case for my pieces for the magazine, I am fortunate enough to be able to channel both of these driving forces.

In the case of the former, I am somewhat obsessed with the idea of abstracting emotions and experiences into music. Even if nothing remarkable comes of these musings, I still explore them as creative exercises for myself. It honestly could be anything I observe, a finite object, an artichoke. Its fortress-like structure, its geometric bracts and thorns, its soft and mushy heart- in the center of which is the choke itself, a delicious but texturally inedible fibrous sinew.

But more often, and in the case of the pieces featured in Curious Magazine, my music is ultimately telling my personal story - whether the music and written words I put in each issue may suggest it or not. Given that the magazine themes have been directly on the pulse of the human condition, every subsequent piece I create is both a step in my musical career and an illuminating and grounding step inward.

Who are your influences?

As a pianist and composer, my primary influences include earlier modernist composers such as Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartok, Leo Ornstein, Claude Debussy, and George Antheil.

I was raised on a steady diet of classical and romantic era composers such as Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Rossini, Chopin, and Grieg. I still love and am moved by the music of this era, but it was in late 19th/early 20th century modernism that I felt a spiritual shockwave ranging from the tranquil surrender of Debussy and Satíe, the sensual and devastating fever dreams by Ravel and Scriabin, to the abject horror and obtuse disaffection with modern life as relived in the music of Bartok, Antheil, and Shostakovich.

Tell us about Seven Curious Pieces:

Seven Curious Pieces for Piano all started with my “Millennial Pink” composition for the first issue of Curious. For the longest time I had been obsessed with the idea of making music inspired by synesthesia; in which I envisioned to relate the twelve chromatic tones/keys with a twelve-tone color wheel.

During the process of composing “Millennial Pink”, my 12- idea proved to be increasingly difficult and impersonal. I instead opted for a more abstract model. I adopted the subtractive color wheel (CMYK) for several reasons: (1) I found the conceptual parameter itself more intriguing and inspiring, (2) which was only further inspired when I learned of then-future magazine themes such as “Revenge” and “Biophilia”, (3) and naturaly I came to feel that choosing the logo and namesake of the magazine was a fitting tribute to the platform which has gifted me this beautiful project that is a self-actualizing account and metaphor for my own healing.

“Saudade” is the fourth of seven pieces of the complete suite. Although the concept came to me without effort, it was the most difficult piece for me to compose as it was the most personal and painful of the first four. That being said, it is my favorite piece of the four I’ve written so far. I compose each piece to be a distinct standalone that can be individually experienced within the context of each magazine issue, but I feel that “Saudade” is in fact the noticeable turning point in which the larger spiritual metaphor truly begins to make itself apparent.