Samu Gryllus earned his bachelor's degree at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, graduating as a performer and teacher of jazz bass guitar. He later went on to Vienna to study under Michael Jarrell and Klaus Peter Sattler at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, first earning a diploma in media composition in 2007, followed by another in music composition in 2012. In 2005, he attended Daniel Ott and Walter Zimmerman's classes in experimental music and theatre at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He also studied with Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton and Ron Kuivila at Wesleyan University in the US state of Connecticut in 2008/09. In 2012, he both earned a teaching certificate in Paris to provide instruction in soundpainting and also won the Theodor Körner Prize from the Austrian state. He has taken part in several master classes, including ones led by George Aperghis, Péter Eötvös, Jonathan Harvey and Marco Stroppa. A doctoral candidate at Budapest's University of Theatre and Film Arts, he wrote his dissertation on the multi-generic aspects of instrumental theatre.
He has composed the music for numerous theatrical and film productions both in his native Hungary and in England, Austria, the United States, the Netherlands, Ireland and Germany. His first chamber opera, AOIHANA, was premiered at Berlin's Sophiensaele in 2007. In 2009, together with Kitchen Budapest, he took part at an exhibition showcasing Hungary at the Brooklyn Museum of Arts with his Opera Looper interactive audio visual project. Theater an der Wien commissioned him to write his second chamber opera, Blaubarts, in 2012. In 2013, he and two other composers jointly took part in a production of the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, composing the role of “Medium” for the chamber opera Out at S.E.A. 456.
He has regularly held soundpainting workshops since 2013. He teaches at the Tibor Varga Institute of Music at Széchenyi University in Győr and at Vienna's VMI Conservatory. He is a member of the W.H. Performing Band, the IKULT artists group, Budapest's Hermina Artists' Collective, which brings music composers together with fine artists, and the Austrian section of the International Society for New Music. He is the organiser and curator of the Transparent Sound New Music Festival. In 2017, the Hungarian State Opera premiered his chamber opera Two Women, based on the novel by Zoltán András Bán and directed by Patrícia Horváth.
He has composed the music for numerous theatrical and film productions both in his native Hungary and in England, Austria, the United States, the Netherlands, Ireland and Germany. His first chamber opera, AOIHANA, was premiered at Berlin's Sophiensaele in 2007. In 2009, together with Kitchen Budapest, he took part at an exhibition showcasing Hungary at the Brooklyn Museum of Arts with his Opera Looper interactive audio visual project. Theater an der Wien commissioned him to write his second chamber opera, Blaubarts, in 2012. In 2013, he and two other composers jointly took part in a production of the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, composing the role of “Medium” for the chamber opera Out at S.E.A. 456.
He has regularly held soundpainting workshops since 2013. He teaches at the Tibor Varga Institute of Music at Széchenyi University in Győr and at Vienna's VMI Conservatory. He is a member of the W.H. Performing Band, the IKULT artists group, Budapest's Hermina Artists' Collective, which brings music composers together with fine artists, and the Austrian section of the International Society for New Music. He is the organiser and curator of the Transparent Sound New Music Festival. In 2017, the Hungarian State Opera premiered his chamber opera Two Women, based on the novel by Zoltán András Bán and directed by Patrícia Horváth.
