Sam is a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) and Sproull Fellow in music theory at the Eastman School of Music, currently working on his dissertation “Logics of Mediation and the Cultural Economy of J-pop and K-pop.” Situated at the intersection of music, media, and cultural studies, his research broadly focuses on what close analysis can reveal about the conditions of music’s production, commodification, circulation, and consumption, and how these broader contexts offer novel ways of hearing and interpreting the music itself. Additionally, he has interests in jazz theory/analysis—particularly the music of Hiromi—and issues of transcription, especially questions of representation, ethics, and academic politics. Sam was awarded the Jerald C. Graue Memorial Fellowship (ESM Department of Musicology) for his work on J-pop singer/model Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (2024–2025); an Honorable Mention for SMT’s Student Presentation Award for his paper on anime OPs (2024); and the Hofstra University Undergraduate Library Research Award for his thesis on form in jazz standards (2020).

Active within the discipline, Sam currently serves as Associate Web Editor for the Society for Music Theory (SMT), Co-chair of SMT’s Analysis of World Musics Interest Group, and Technical Editor for the Analytical Approaches to World Musics journal. At Eastman, he is a co-editor for Intégral, and has previously served as a web manager. Beyond academia, Sam is the Assistant Store Manager at LensCrafters, currently completing a New York State licensure in Ophthalmic Dispensing. In his free time, he enjoys building mechanical keyboards, eating ramen, and spending time with his corgi, Pan! He has previously studied at Hunter College (CUNY), the University of Colorado Boulder, and Hofstra University. For more, see his creatively titled website: https://samfaloti.co.