Riya Kumar

Seventeen year old Riya Kumar began composing music when she was 8 years old.  She is touted by her instructors at NYU-Steinhart screen scoring department as a “remarkable talent, a composer with a unique gift for storytelling through her scores in TV, film, and videogames”.

In 2021, at the tender age of 16, she tasted her first success when her custom orchestral composition was purchased by Al-Jazeera for a promotional video broadcast as a part of their 25th-anniversary celebration. A year later, Riya was awarded a scholarship to NYU-Steinhart for an intensive summer Screen Scoring Workshop.

Riya is a multi-instrumentalist versed in violin, piano, Hindustani vocals, and harmonium. As a consistently top performer in her Middle and High School orchestras, she composed multiple orchestral scores for her school ensembles.

In addition to her deep interest in western classical, pop, and jazz idioms, Riya embraces Indian classical, Bollywood, and Carnatic music, She delights in writing scores that fuse Western and Indian traditions.

Riya is currently working as a lead composer for an LA-based 30-member animated film project, "The Frozen Sky." After graduating High School in 2023, she plans to continue her university studies in film, TV, and videogame scoring.

Riya has emerged as a unique voice in the western and Indian music industries.