Currently based in Los Angeles, Nika Ko (they/them) works as a pianist, music educator, and freelance composer for films and other visual media. Ko currently works as a contract composer for the sync licensing company Morris and Young, teaches at Bloom School of Music and Dance, and scores independent film projects in the LA area. 

 

A 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 won best documentary short at the 2023 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. 

 

Since moving to Los Angeles, Ko has also worked as a contract composer, music supervisor, and music editor for companies like Armadillo Media and Entertainment, 6andLine Productions, and Kino Lorber. One highlight is Ko’s commissioned score for an archival short film shot by Thomas Edison himself. Ko has also scored several other films with recent premieres, 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 earned 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,” 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.