The Composer
Sam Belich has managed to combine several musical and theatrical careers into one. Educated at the University of Wisconsin in Madison as a music educator under Dr. Marvin Rabin, he studied violin/viola with Thomas Moore, cello with Lowell Creitz, voice with Ilona Kombrink and conducting with Otto Werner Mueller. He attended The Juilliard School as a viola student of William Lincer and spent 16 years as a core member of the Brooklyn Philharmonic's viola section under Lukas Foss. He studied voice/opera with Oren Brown, Edith Bers, Pamela Kucenic-Motisi, Darrell Lauer, Boris Goldovsky, Vincent La Selva. and performed with the New York City Opera Company, New Jersey State Opera, New York Grand Opera, and The Milwaukee Opera Company, among others. A private voice teacher and vocal coach for thirty-five years, his students have performed throughout the United States, as well as internationally. Mr. Belich also taught at the Brookfield Academy, Wisconsin's premier preparatory school, for which he created a successful music and drama program, working with students ages 4 through 18. He has directed productions of The Marriage of Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte, Dido and Aeneas, The Pearl Fishers, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Shenandoah, Oliver!, Anything Goes!, The Sound of Music, The Dinosaur Musical, The Glass Menagerie, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Hamlet, among others. Mr. Belich has composed three operas -- The Trojan Women, Laius and Chrysippus, The Eglantine -- as well as other vocal, symphonic, ballet and chamber music.
His current project with co-author John Hammel, is KRiEp. A "Grusical" (a music drama comprised of serious, comic and horrific elements) that aims to musically and dramatically portray the fascination and internecine ways in which society exploits serial killers and their victims.
