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11June

Director x Composer Collaborations at Tribeca

June 7th 2026
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7June

Measure For Measure

Director x Composer Collaborations at Tribeca

June 7th 2026

The Alliance for Women Film Composers, Composers Diversity Collective, and Film Fatales hosted an in-person panel discussion during the Tribeca Festival. There was an intimate conversation with several filmmaker/composer teams about their creative process of collaboration. It was followed by a casual social mixer hosted by Ensemble Recording.

Panelists included:

Cynthia Lowen (director) – Kids Like Me
Vikram Gandhi (director) Tori Letzler (composer) and Steven Richard Davis (composer) – The Man Will Burn
Rachel Rose (director) and Sofia degli Alessandri (composer) – The Last Day
Ran Jing (director) and Matthew Wang (composer) – Imprint
Moderated by Shruti Kumar (composer) – CDC

Details

Date:
June 7
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Details

Date:
June 7
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Panelists

Cynthia Lowen is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and award-winning writer whose work uses the power of story to catalyze meaningful change, confronting timely social issues from bullying to online harassment to reproductive rights. Her new feature documentary, KIDS LIKE ME is premiering in competition at the 2026 Tribeca Fest, following a precocious pre-teen growing up with disabilities, who sets out to create the perfect murder-mystery caper. Cynthia is also a 2023 Sundance/Alfred P. Sloan Screenwriting Fellow for her feature narrative script LIGHT MASS ENERGY, the story of Mileva Marić Einstein, who confronted rampant discrimination to become one of the first women in physics. Cynthia is the director/producer of BATTLEGROUND, about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, premiering at the 2022 Tribeca Festival, theatrically released through Abramorama and streaming on STARZ. Cynthia is also the director/producer of NETIZENS (HBO), a feature documentary about women and online harassment. She’s the producer and writer of BULLY, a feature documentary following five kids and families through a year in the life of America’s bullying crisis, which was shortlisted for the Oscars and nominated for two Emmys. In conjunction with her films, Cynthia has spearheaded large-scale impact campaigns, working with partners such as Autism Speaks, Facebook, Human Rights Campaign, Microsoft, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, the United Federation of Teachers, and many others. She is a winner of the National Poetry Series and is a member of the Producers Guild of America.

Matthew Wang is a NYC-based composer who is best known for co-scoring the latest 2 Reno 911! films alongside Craig Wedren. He has contributed additional music to projects including Yellowjackets (Showtime), New Amsterdam (NBC) Rick And Morty (Adult Swim), and War Of The Worlds (Amazon Prime) and he most recently scored an upcoming documentary directed by Ky Dickens for Amazon Prime. Additionally he is a music editor who has worked with composers including Mark Mothersbaugh, Cristobal Tapia De Veer, and Jeff Cardoni among others on projects including Hello Tomorrow! (Apple TV), Club Kid (A24), BTS: The Return (Netflix) and Free Bert (Netflix).

Rachel Rose works across film, painting, sculpture, and drawing, and has emerged over the past decade as one of the foremost artists of her generation. She has exhibited in biennials globally from the Venice Biennale to the São Paulo Biennial to the Jeju Biennale, and has had solo exhibitions at institutions worldwide including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Serpentine Galleries, and Museu Serralves. Her work is also held in major public collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Musée d’Art Moderne Paris, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and Tate Modern, among many others. She was a recipient of the Frieze Artist Award in and the Illy Present Future Prize, THE LAST DAY is her feature film debut.

Ran Jing is a writer-director and NYU Tisch graduate whose work spans live action and animation. Her debut feature MODEL earned acclaim from Variety China, won multiple awards at Academy Award® and BAFTA-qualifying festivals, and received a theatrical release in China. Named one of ISA’s “Top 25 Writers to Watch,” she is a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, CineStory Foundation Scholar, and Stowe Narrative Lab alum whose scripts have placed on Coverfly’s Red List. Formerly a storyboard artist at Blue Sky Studios, she contributed to Spies in Disguise, The Peanuts Movie, and the Ice Age franchise. A member of the WGA, Film Fatales and Rideback Rise, Ran is currently a Directing Fellow at AFI’s DWW+ program, completing her sifi thriller short Imprint, starting Wrenn Schimit.

Shruti Kumar (she/her) is a composer, arranger, and conductor working in NY, LA, and London. In the film and TV sphere, she has a wide range of experience from scores to songs. In 2022, she began collaborating with film composer Daniel Hart (The Green Knight, A Ghost Story) on the scores for AMC’s ‘Interview With The Vampire’ series one and two, and Disney’s ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’. She scored the animated festival favorite ‘Passage’ (dir. Asavari Kumar) as well as ‘Esther In Wonderland’ (dir. Stephanie Bollag) which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. She co-composed the score to the Alicia Keys documentary ‘Uncharted’ (dir. Beth Aala) which premiered at Tribeca 2023. Over the last two years, Shruti collaborated with the Disney Imagineering team to arrange the music for their Haunted Mansion Experience. She begins composing on a major Amazon series this year. In songwriting and production, she has collaborated with artists including Alicia Keys, Garbage, Nas, No Doubt, and Fiona Apple. She prides herself on her ability to fuse genres from orchestral to experimental electronic to pop and hip-hop.

Sofia degli Alessandri, AKA Drum & Lace, is a Florence-raised, London-based musician. A composer for film with degrees from the prestigious Berklee College of Music (Film Scoring & Composition) and New York University (Music Technology), her accolades include work with 20th Century Studios, Lionsgate, NBC, AppleTV+ and Amazon Studios on notable projects such films such as 2024’s hit ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’, the sci-fi drama ‘All of You’ (2025), the Sundance Audience Award-winning documentary ‘Prime Minister’ (2025), and upcoming drama ‘The Last Day’ that is premiereing at Tribeca Film Festival 2026. Her TV scoring credits include the AppleTV+ series ‘Dickinson’ and the recent NBC mystery-comedy ‘Grosse Pointe Garden Society’. She was recently nominated for a 2026 ASCAP Composers’ Choice Award for her score to ‘Prime Minister’. At the same time she’s been releasing music outside her scoring work, using her extensive synth collection to find her voice as an electronic producer. Sofia has shared the stage with artists as disparate and luminary as William Basinski, Suzanne Ciani, Shirley Manson of Garbage, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, black midi, Sqürl and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, while the stages she’s performed on include revered London venues like Café OTO and EartH, Moogfest, Public Records NY, Slingshot Festival and National Sawdust’s Digital Discovery Festival in the US and Festa Dell’Opera in Italy.

Steven Richard Davis is a Los Angeles-based composer known for his work across film, television, video games, and advertising. With credits spanning more than 100 projects, his music is recognized for its cinematic scope, emotional depth, and distinctive hybrid style. Steven’s musical journey began early as a percussionist in elementary school. At just 12 years old, he founded the band Lamoor, performing as both lead vocalist and guitarist. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in Recording Arts and Music Production from California State University, San Marcos, and continued his studies in composition through UCLA’s film scoring program. Tori Letzler is a Los Angeles based composer, vocalist, and electronic producer, whose eclectic background and distinctive artistic voice have shaped a dynamic career across film, television and video games. Recent credits include Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 & 6 Zombies, Alien: Romulus, Season 4 of HBO’s Industry and the upcoming docuseries The Man Will Burn for HBO. Tori is best known for her score to Netflix’s Russian spy sci-fi thriller In From the Cold, where she crafted a synth driven soundscape inspired by the industrial music movement of the 1990s, blending haunting textures with heavily processed and ethereal vocals.

Vikram Gandhi is an award-winning and boundary-pushing director of fiction and non-fiction film and television. In 2012, his feature documentary KUMARÉ, in which he impersonated a religious leader, won the Audience Award at SXSW and was distributed by Kino Lorber. Vikram was a producer and correspondent on the Emmy Award–winning documentary series VICE on HBO for five seasons. Since he’s directed and produced BARRY(Netflix), TRIGGER WARNING(Netflix), GRASS IS GREENER(Netflix), and 69: THE SAGA OF DANNY HERNANDEZ(Hulu) through his production company Prophets. He co-directed THE MAN WILL BURN (HBO) premiering at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. His next film IN SATOSHI WE TRUST explores the myth of Bitcoin’s anonymous creator.

Community Partners

The Alliance For Women Film Composers is a community of composers and colleagues who strive to support and celebrate the work of women and non-binary composers through advocacy and education. This visibility is important to herald in equality amongst our industry and bring diverse voices to film, television, video games and multimedia projects globally. We are proud to host the first ever directory of women film composers allowing filmmakers and decision makers the opportunity to discover new talent.

The Composers Diversity Collective exists to eliminate the industry’s challenge to find culturally diverse music creators, music supervisors, sound engineers and musicians, to increase our own awareness of each other, and to dispel misconceptions about the stylistic range of any minority composer.

Ensemble Recording is a full-service professional recording studio designed by the Wes Lachot Design Group. Formerly known as Pulse Music, the studio is nestled in the heart of Manhattan’s Chelsea and NoMad districts. Hosting recording sessions for film, Broadway cast albums and select music-industry luminaries, the facility is the brainchild of film producer and composer Simon TaufiQue, triple Grammy-winning engineer John Kilgore, LA-based publisher Pen Music, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards-winner Andrew Resnick and first-call Broadway session drummer Jamie Eblen.