Sam van Ommen (born 1997) is a composer, guitarist, and songwriter from Amsterdam. He grew up in Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, and Ghana before returning to the Netherlands at the age of fifteen. He studied guitar at the pop department of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, graduating in 2021. In his final semester, he took a film composition course, which further fueled his enthusiasm for music in film and visuals.
Since then, he has worked for several years as a composer, sound designer, and mixer at Airborne Audio, a podcast production company in Amsterdam. There, he worked on over 40 podcasts, which helped him grow as a composer – particularly in understanding the role of music as an amplifier of stories and emotions.
Besides his work as a composer, Sam is active as a solo artist under the name Sam Vano, and as a guitarist in various projects (Tim Knol, Community TV, Victoria Canal). In 2023, he composed the music for the short film Bekende Vreemdelingen, a gripping drama about friendship, written and directed by Nico Strik Peña. The film premieres this year.