AYDA AKBAL

Ayda Akbal is a composer and songwriter for screen and stage - currently based in Melbourne, Australia. She is passionate about exploring human emotion and culture in her work.

She is excited to learn as much as she can about her craft and is currently finishing a Bachelors of Music and Psychology at Monash University, whilst broadening her skillset both at home and overseas. Recently she participated in New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Intensive (2022), offered a fully-funded placed at APRA AMCOS Screen Music SongHubs camp (2022), and participated in High-Score Co-Op for Video Game Music (2023).

Ayda is proud of her 2021 debut album release, ‘Magic’, which she composed, performed, recorded, produced, and sound-engineered all on her own. She was delighted when it received a 4/5 star review on Divide and Conquer Music.

A year after her album release, Ayda was asked to write the trailer / end-credits song for the feature documentary 'My Sister Liv' (Unreleased) which had its North American Premiere at DOC NYC 2022.  

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She scored the short film, ‘Putty’s Pride’, which garnered international recognition in 2021 - premiering at the Coast Film Festival in California, and the Melbourne/Sydney Lift-Off Festival. She has further scored other short-films, with directors and collaborators all across the world.  

She also composes commercially for well-known global brands (Thermo Fisher Scientific; WW; Dice Throne Board Games), with her music reaching thousands of viewers internationally, and a Kickstarter campaign she composed for raising over $800,000.

Recently, she started a collaboration with a leading VST company – Spitfire Audio – creating composer content and showcasing libraries for both their main brand, and their LABS free products.

Her first collaboration on a musical, ’The Brink Of Womanhood’, took to the stage in April at the Athenaeum Theatre in the heart of Chicago, Illinois - performed to sold-out audiences.

Ayda is excited to be a part of the brilliant creative team behind ‘A Play About Ivy, That Is Really About June’ which premiered at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2022, and is proud to share her emotive soundtrack and song-writing behind the play.

She is also currently working as ‘Composer in Residence’ at Balcombe Grammar School where she is bringing to life an original soundtrack co-composed by the students – to be performed alongside a rendition of ‘The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe’.  

Although her heart will always lie with Logic Pro, Ayda is also a whizz at Sibelius and has worked extensively as an orchestrator and score-preparer on projects.

She recently prepared the score and parts for a performance by The Perth Symphony Orchestra featuring vocalist Jessie Gordon. Collaborating with a new connection from her experience at NYU, she transcribed and arranged Philip Glass’ score for The Truman Show, for a debut theatrical performance in Madrid, Spain. She also works as a band leader, pianist, and vocalist putting on various gigs around the Melbourne music scene, for which she always prepares and formats her scores and parts to (near) perfection.​

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(April, 2023)