SAMP Mission
Small Art Music Projects’ mission is to support the creation, presentation, and documentation of innovative new music - within the San Francisco Bay Area and around the world - as well as to teach future generations how to perform it, listen to it, and educate students to be able to leverage those skills to enrich their lives and capabilities inside and outside of the art form of music.
SAMP History
Small Art Music Projects (SAMP) began as a fiscally-sponsored project of Intersection for the Arts in 2005, and has operated annual performance seasons in the San Francisco Bay Area since its inception. After a decade of successfully funded projects for both performance and educational work, SAMP officially incorporated as a 501c3 non-profit in 2014, and began expanding its programming. SAMP has presented, and provided funding support for concerts at major presenters and venues around the world, such as Carnegie Hall, Davies Symphony Hall, Yoshi’s, and the de Young Museum, along with numerous other major venues throughout the Bay Area and around the world.
SAMP Funders
We are so grateful for the generous contributions from our individual donors, as well as our previous and current funders, which have included the James Irvine Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, the Wallace Foundation, Dawn Redwoods Trust, the de Young Museum, and the California Arts Council.
SAMP Board
President - Sean Geoghegan
Vice President - Kate Thompson
Secretary - Matt Small
SAMP Staff
Artistic Director & Founder Matt Small
Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a gifted San Francisco bassist and composer whose alluringly original music draws on a rich range of classical, jazz and indigenous music,” Matt Small has been developing his own cutting-edge, multi-genre work in the Bay Area since 1997. With a deep dedication to his craft and an unrelenting spirit of curiosity, Small explores a wide variety of musical traditions while exercising “a strong aesthetic sensibility” (Down Beat Magazine). Small has found inspiration from a vast array of music, including jazz, experimental, popular, Western classical, and indigenous music styles from around the world.
To date, Small has performed at, and had his music presented by, major concert halls and presenters across the globe, including Carnegie Hall, The Monterey Jazz Festival, SF Jazz, The Angel City Jazz Festival, Banff’s International Music Fest,
Media Samples Here
National Centre for the Performing Arts Beijing, Taipei National Concert Hall, Qingdao Grand Theater, Abu Dhabi Emirates Palace Auditorium, Kala Mandir (Calcutta), The Tanglewood Music Center, Harvard’s Sanders Theater, UCSB’s Granada Theater, and the SF-MOMA, along with numerous other major venues throughout the Bay Area and around the world. Small has released many commercially available albums with his main ensembles, showcasing a wide variety of compositional work that has been lauded in the local and national press.As a bassist, Small has performed with world renowned, Grammy Award winning performing artists and organizations, such as Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (featuring Sandeep Das, Kayhan Kalhor, Wu Tong, Alim Qasimov, Wu Man, Ko Umezaki, Shane Shanahan, members of Brooklyn Rider String Quartet among others), Lev and Alexander Zhurbin, Daniel David Feinsmith, Jennifer Culp, Christopher Taylor, Gyan Riley, Mark Dresser, Zeena Parkins, Miya Masaoka, ROVA sax quartet (Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Steve Adams, Bruce Ackley), Dohee Lee, Vinny Golia, Jenny Scheinman, Carla Kihlstedt, Marika Hughes, Jewlia Eisenberg, Scott Amendola, Ben Goldberg, Nik Phelps, Phillip Greenlief, Matt Brubeck, Myles Boisen, Deirdre McClure, Eskimo (Andy Borger, John Shiurba, David Cooper, Tom Yoder), Zach Rogue (Rogue Wave), Will Calhoun, Katy Stephen, Mitch Marcus, Sylvain Carton, Jeff Marrs, Chris Grady, Sheldon Brown, Micah McClain, Rachel Condry, Sarah Zaharako, Paula Dreyer, Kymry Esainko, Walker Lewis, Robert Moses’ Kin Dance Company, Oakland Opera Theatre, The Berkeley, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Long Beach, and California Symphonies, among many other performers and ensembles.
Small and his music have been featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”, the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) TV documentary on The Silk Road, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG-SSR), Bay Area radio stations KALW, KPFA and KQED, and contemporary music podcasts. Compositional honors for Small include multiple awards from the American Composers Forum, as well as commissioning and funding awards from, and supported by, Intersection for the Arts’ “Jazz at Intersection” series, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the de Young Museum, San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, The California Arts Council, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.
More info at – MattSmall.org
Stefanie Small
Development
Educational Program Outreach
Live Concert & Event Support
Video and Digital Media Producer
Writer, producer, and publicist Stefanie Small has worked a lifetime in the arts – both in front of the cameras, on the stage, and behind the scenes. She is currently retained by corporations, nonprofits, and solopreneures for business strategy and web and language development that is accessible and engaging in support of their communications strategies.
As a professional, Stefanie spent years as a content creator for an educational nonprofit, podcast producer for multiple entities, in addition to keeping a roster of independent clients she supported in (re)launching their businesses.
Prior to those years, Stefanie was a sought after publicist in the Bay Area’s performing arts market, working first for the premier arts presenter of the West Coast, Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, then with the boutique PR firm Carla Befera PR.
Stefanie launched a veritable who’s who of international performance artists and institutions, including Yo-Yo Ma and the West Coast premiere of the Silk Road Project, Mikhail Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Project, Alvin Ailey American Dance Company’s first Ailey Camp on the West Coast, the Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra, and countless additional dance, theatre, jazz, world, and early music artists. Her commercial efforts included the American premiere of the equestrian extravaganza Cavalia, multiple tours of Ringling Brothers circus and Disney on Ice, and some of the longest running hit theatricals in San Francisco.