Celebrating Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month: Composer Showcase
Spectra Creative Agency values the importance of promoting visibility to underrepresented composers to broaden narrative horizons and multicultural authenticity within the film and television industry. This Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month we proudly showcase and celebrate two composers for their excellence in the composing community and their work to pave the way for aspiring AAPI composers, artists, and musicians.
Tangelene Bolton (she/her) is a Filipina-American film, TV, and media composer based in Los Angeles, CA. Her work can be heard in Netflix’s original series Warrior Nun (Season 2), created and executive produced by Simon Barry; Blumhouse’s thriller film Unseen, directed by Yoko Okumura; and most recently in Season 3 of Comedy Central’s Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, created by Awkwafina and Teresa Hsiao. Tangelene possesses a distinct music style that is a mashup of neoclassical, electronic, folk, and jazz. She boldly turns traditional and conventional sounds into exciting and new territories.
Her latest short film The Van just screened at the 2023 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival on May 13th and also recently won Best Narrative Short Film at the 2023 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.
Matthew Wang (he/him) is a film and television composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist based in New York and Los Angeles. His work can be heard in both Paramount's Reno 911!: The Hunt for QAnon as well as Comedy Central's Reno 911!: It's a Wonderful Heist. Matthew will also be scoring the upcoming Yo Yo Honey Singh documentary to be released later this year on Netflix from Academy Award winning Sikhya Entertainment. Matthew creates inventive scores and soundscapes that pull from his background in pop songwriting and production—which focuses on building entire sonic worlds out of pithy narratives—as well as his technical expertise in electronic sound design and programming.
His latest short film Refuse just had its world premiere at the 2023 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival on May 13th.
In addition to these Asian American composers, we are also proud to represent the following international Asian composers:
Raised in Hong Kong and Vancouver, brothers Caleb and Brian Chan write with a wide palette of colors, nuanced imaginations, and a deep admiration of music from many spaces. In film and TV, recent projects include providing the off-kilter score for Panhandle (Sony/Spectrum), the medieval-orchestral-folk adventure score for Pinecone and Pony (Apple TV+), and the 808-infused heist score for Team Zenko Go (Netflix). The brothers provide a unique voice to picture by crafting thoughtful scores informed by organic textures, modern orchestra, and experimental synthesis.
Ghiya Rushidat (she/her) is an orchestral composer with an expansive, multicultural creative voice. Born in Saudi Arabia, raised in Jordan, and now based between Los Angeles and the UK, she has built a career composing music for both Western and Middle Eastern projects and is a strong advocate for ensuring that Arab culture and heritage is more widely embraced by Hollywood. Ghiya’s signature immersive and sensory composition can be heard in ‘Pen of Mirrors’, the feature film starring Oscar nominee Eric Roberts; ‘Ajwan’, an adaptation of the best selling novel series and the first Arab animated sci-fi thriller series; and ‘Shadow Vaults’, featuring Javier Muñoz, star of ‘Hamilton’ on Broadway.
Born in Tokyo, Japanese composer Akira Kosemura (he/him) has composed music for film, stage, game and commercials, including the Cannes 2020 feature film True Mothers (Asa Ga Kuru), the OWN series Love Is__ produced by Mara Brock Akil, and the Nintendo Switch game JACK JEANNE produced by Sui Ishida. As an artist he has released various albums of crossover genre music featuring the sounds of piano, strings, winds, synthesizers, and field recordings.
Akira's latest album SEASONS will be out on June 30th on Decca Records.