He continued to compose during his undergraduate years at Yale University (BA, 1976), where his teachers included Robert Fountain (conducting) and Alejandro Planchart (early music).
He spent his junior year at Yale abroad, studying conducting with Helmuth Rilling in Germany and composition with Sylvano Bussotti in Italy.
He spent four summers at the Aspen Music School, studying choral and operatic conducting with Fiora Contino and voice with Jan DeGaetani.
Largely self-taught as a composer, Sametz's style is influenced by Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, French Impressionism, the works of Igor Stravinsky and world music.
During his graduate studies, he served on the musical staff of St. Paul's Church in Madison, Wisconsin, conducting a small choir devoted to performance of Gregorian chant reading from the Liber Usualis.
The combined influences of Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, Impressionism and Asian music led to a style more based in timbre and overlapping melodic lines (at times aleatoric) than in harmonic motion.
In fulfillment of the award, Sametz composed the oratorio, A Child's Requiem, in memory of the twenty-six victims slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
His Dudaryku – A Village Scene (2001), written for Chanticleer and The Princeton Singers, is an extended double-choir work that poignantly portrays the loss of a musician and musical life in a small Ukrainian town.
These worlds, often based on myths, legends, or folk tales from across the globe, reflect in deeply personal ways on universal themes of love, loss, joy, mortality, and a transcendence of earthly cares.
Originally conceived as a large work for three orchestras and five choirs, it was later revised for the twelve singers of Chanticleer, in which form it was featured on their 1999 Grammy Award-winning CD, Colors of Love.
In 2011, the work was given at Carnegie Hall under the direction of the composer with Carmen Pelton, soprano and William Burden, tenor and the Lehigh University Choral Arts.
The 2009 setting of Whitman's We Two Boys Together Clinging for baritone and tenor duet with vibraphone and violoncello was later recast as the central movement of his Not an End of Loving (2010) for 12-voice chamber choir, which was premiered and recorded by Chanticleer.
Sametz has created several ballets, from his early Arachne's Busy Shopping Day (1987) to his setting of a Tlingit creation myth, The White Raven-ballet-concerto for piano, chorus and orchestra (2005), to the more recent Small Steps/Tiny Revolutions (2008) written for the Rioult Dance company of New York, premiered at Lehigh University and subsequently staged in Florida, Ohio and State College, PA. Sametz's compositions are published by E.C.
As Artistic Director of the Princeton Singers since 1998, Sametz has recorded four CDs and led the ensemble in repertoire from the medieval era to newly composed works.
Guest conducting appearances include the Taipei Philharmonic Foundation, the Berkshire Music Festival, the New York Chamber Symphony, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, CONCORA, Chanticleer and the Netherlands Radio Choir.