AVI AMON is a Turkish-American composer, sound artist, and educator. He is a sought-after collaborator in theater, film, dance, and experiential art.
Recent credits include: INCOMPLETE (Hulu, NAACP Image Award Nominee) and CUPIDS dir. Zoey Martinson (Cannes, Tribeca Film Festival, BET); A GOOD DAY TO ME NOT TO YOU with Lameece Isaaq and Lee Sunday Evans (produced by Waterwell @ The Connelly Theater); SELLING KABUL (Northern Stage); SWEET CHARIOT with Eric Lockley and Shariffa Ali (Under the Radar @ The Public Theater); HOUND DOG with Machel Ross, Melis Aker, The Lazours (Ars Nova); Mona Mansour’s UNSEEN with Evren Odcikin (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); INSHALLAH/MASHALLAH (Target Margin Theater); BENIMLE GELIR MISIN/WILL YOU COME WITH ME with Keenan Tyler Oliphant (The Play Company); MLIMA’S TALE (St, Louis REP) & THE COPPER CHILDREN with Shariffa Ali (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); STEW, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, with Zora Howard and Colette Robert (Page73 @ Soho REP); THE FISHERMAN dir. Zoey Martinson (HBO Films); BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL with Kareem Lucas (Page73 & New York Theatre Workshop); PAUL SWAN IS DEAD AND GONE with Claire Kiechel (The Civilians); SALONIKA (Berkeley REP Ground Floor) and THE WHITE CITY with Julia Gytri (Yale Institute, O’Neill National Music Theater Conference, Richard Rodgers Award Finalist); JEUNE TERRE with Gab Reisman (Page73, Playwrights Center); and several sound installations in a 100-year-old grain silo in Buffalo, New York (w/ Torn Space Theater, featured at the Prague Quadrennial).
Avi’s work has also been developed or presented by Actors Theatre of Louisville, Atlantic Theater, BAM, Barnard, Danspace, The Drama League, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Exponential Festival, HERE Arts, JACK, Juilliard, Lincoln Center, La Mama, New York Puppet Festival, New York Theatre Barn, Noorderzon Festival, Prague Film Festival, Prospect Theater, Roundabout, and Spoleto Festival USA, among others.
Avi is the 2023 recipient of a major grant from the Reel Change Film Fund to score the upcoming feature doc, EVERYTHING YOU HAVE IS YOURS (dir. Tatyana Tenenbaum). He has also been awarded a Thom Thomas Award and Jonathan Larson Grant, 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: Exploring the Metropolis at JCAL, Hi-ARTS, Johnny Mercer Writers’ Grove at Goodspeed Musicals, Judson Memorial Church, The Kennedy Center, 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.
Currently in development: music & sound design for THE FOLLOWING EVENING with 600 Highwaymen and the Talking Band (Perelman Performing Arts Center, 2024); music for THROUGH THE SUNKEN LANDS: a new TYA musical with Tim J. Lord (Kennedy Center, 2024); THE LESSON with Nolan Doran & Ty Defoe; HEROINE'S GUIDE with Claire Kiechel (Spotify/Gimlet); and MOTHER/ROAD: a 3-D-audio opera exploring memory, home, and the unique tension between the joy and loss of the immigrant experience (Bushwick Starr, New York Theater Workshop, Shakespeare and Company.) 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 he's not writing, Avi tends to his immense plant collection and creates horticultural installations for friends. He lives in Brooklyn with his family and their cat, Elvis.