SAM DAVIS is a composer, conductor, pianist, and arranger.  He recently made his film scoring debut with Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring Jennifer Lopez. Sam also adapted and arranged the Kander & Ebb songs for the film. Other film credits include Wonka and Beauty and the Beast, as well as the "No Dames" sequence, starring Channing Tatum, from Hail, Caesar!. Sam also arranged and orchestrated the dance music for A Christmas Story Live telecast in 2017, and was an arranger for the TNT show Good Behavior. 

 

On Broadway, Sam works frequently as a composer of dance and incidental arrangements, most recently for the hit musical Death Becomes Her. He was Tony-nominated for co-orchestrating (along with Daryl Waters) the show New York, New York, for which he was also music supervisor and arranger. Other Broadway credits as arranger and/or musical director include Smash, Company, An American in Paris, Side Show, Big Fish, Holiday Inn, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.   In London's West End, he arranged and orchestrated the dance music for a new version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, performed at the Palladium in 2019 and 2021 and then on tour. He was music supervisor for the 2009 national tour of Dreamgirls, as well as productions of that show in Korea, South Africa, and Japan.  He is music supervisor and arranger for the Lynn Ahrens/Stephen Flaherty/Susan Stroman musical Little Dancer, performed at the Kennedy Center and the 5th Avenue Theater and headed for London's West End. Sam was also orchestrator  for Jason Robert Brown's The Trumpet of the Swan also at the Kennedy Center. Sam has created arrangements for such performers as Bette Midler, Ana Gasteyer,  Chita Rivera, Kelli O'Hara, Patrick Wilson, Debbie Gravitte, Liz Callaway, Jason Danieley, and Marin Mazzie, and his orchestrations have been performed by the Philadelphia Pops, the Boston Pops, the New York Pops, the San Francisco Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic, among others.

 

As composer, Sam's credits include The Penelopiad at Chicago's Goodman Theater in 2024, for which he won the Jefferson Award for Original Music.  Other composing credits include a new score for The Lost Colony in Manteo, N.C., performed every summer since 2021. His musical Red Eye of Love had an Off-Braodway run in 2014, and received a studio cast recording starring Kelli O'Hara.  His debut album as songwriter, Love on a Summer Afternoon,  is available on the PS Classics label.  Among Sam's other exensive recording work is Rebecca Luker's album Greenwich Time  (PS Classics), for which Sam composed the title song. In addition to his Tony nomination, he is also a winner of the Jonathan Larson Award, and of an Emerging Artist Award from the University of Michigan School of Music, of which he is a 1998 graduate.