Currently based in Los Angeles, Nika Ko (they/them) works as a pianist and freelance composer for films and other visual media. A recent graduate of Berklee College of Music, Ko studied piano and film composition with many visionaries including Grammy-winner Claudio Ragazzi, NEA jazz master Joanne Brackeen, and 4-time Grammy-winner Terri Lyne Carrington. Ko worked as a composer assistant for Ms. Carrington on her score for Black Girls Play:The Story of Hand Games, which recently won best documentary short at the Tribeca Film Festival. Nika also ran social media and communications for several years for Carrington’s groundbreaking education project, the Berklee Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice. 

 

As a Los Angeles transplant, Nika has been working as a contract music supervisor, music editor, and composer for Oakland-based documentary and advertisement studio 6andLine Productions. They were recently commissioned by the international film distribution company Kino-Lorber to compose and record a score for an archival short film shot by Thomas Edison. They have also scored several other films premiering this past year, including contributions to a feature length documentary about the Bollywood film industry entitled Dream Factory, which screened at the Indian Film Festival in Stuttgart, Germany, and the horror/comedy short Red Dot Special, which scored an honorable mention at LA’s Horrorific Women’s Film Festival. As a pianist, you can hear Ko’s playing as a sideman on Fall Raye’s album “Fall,” which was released on Boomslang Records. 

 

Throughout all of their creative work, Ko maintains an ethos of radical empathy and curiosity. Music is one of our greatest avenues for connection, so Ko aims to use their music as a vehicle to understand, connect with, and transmit the stories of humanity in all its infinite expressions. They prioritize projects that explore social inequality and the experiences of the marginalized, and hope to ultimately use their art to make the world a better place in some small way.