AVI AMON is a Turkish-American composer, sound artist, and educator. He is a sought-after collaborator in theater, film, dance, and experiential art.
Avi is the composer of more than a dozen musicals including: THROUGH THE SUNKEN LANDS with Tim Lord (2024 Kennedy Center world premiere), SALONIKA (Berkeley Rep Ground Floor) & THE WHITE CITY (O’Neill NMTC, Yale Institute, Richard Rogers Award Finalist) with Julia Gytri, JEUNE TERRE with Gab Reisman (Page73, Playwrights Center) and THE LESSON with Nolan Doran & Ty Defoe (Ars Nova, Dramatists Guild Foundation).
Recent theater credits include original music & sound design for THE FOLLOWING EVENING with 600 Highwaymen and the Talking Band (PAC NYC, Noorderzon Festival); A GOOD DAY TO ME NOT TO YOU with Lameece Isaaq and Lee Sunday Evans (produced by Waterwell @ The Connelly Theater); HOUND DOG with Machel Ross, Melis Aker, The Lazours (Ars Nova); Mona Mansour’s UNSEEN directed by Evren Odcikin (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); and Zora Howard’s Pulitzer Prize-finalist play, STEW, directed by Colette Robert (Page73 @ Soho REP).
Film credits include THE FISHERMAN dir. Zoey Martinson (2024 Venice Film Festival), INCOMPLETE (Hulu, NAACP Image Award Nominee), CUPIDS (Cannes, Tribeca Film Festival, BET), and EVERYTHING YOU HAVE IS YOURS dir. Tatyana Tenenbaum (DOC NYC), for which he received a major grant from the Reel Change Film Fund. That soundtrack is available on all major streaming platforms. Additional film scores have been featured with CBS, Disney, HBO, Prague Film Festival, Slamdance, SXSW, & more
Avi has been awarded a Jonathan Larson Grant and Thom Thomas Award, and has received support from New Music USA (with choreographer Hadar Ahuvia), and the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust. He is a MacDowell Fellow, a New Jewish Culture Fellow, a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow, a commissioned member of the NNPN Bridge Program, and an inaugural fellow with THE WORKSHOP. Past residencies include: Berkeley REP Ground Floor, The Church Sag Harbor, Exploring the Metropolis at JCAL, Hi-ARTS, Johnny Mercer Writers’ Grove at Goodspeed Musicals, Judson Memorial Church, Mana Contemporary, Mercury Store, New Dramatists, The New Harmony Project, The O’Neill, The Orchard Project, Princeton, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Target Margin, THEatre ACCELERATOR, Weston Playhouse, and Yale.
UPCOMING: music & sound design for EMPTY RIDE dir. Sivan Battat (The Old Globe) and MOTHER/ROAD: a 3-D-audio opera exploring memory, home, and grief (The SHED Open Call, MacDowell, Bushwick Starr, Center for Performance Research, NYTW) Avi and Julia will also continue development of their musical, SALONIKA, a fusion of obscure fairy tales that parallels escapist fantasy with the reality of the extermination of the Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews in Salonika, Greece.
Avi is the resident composer and Music Director at the 52nd Street Project, where he co-writes songs with young people and has the time of his life. He also teaches a variety of collaborative art-making courses at NYU (Tisch School of the Arts), where he received his MFA in Musical Theatre Writing. When not writing, Avi tends to an immense plant collection and creates horticultural installations for friends. Avi lives in Brooklyn with his family,