About Marianna Filippi

Marianna Filippi, born in Vermont, grew up surrounded by creativity, animals, and nature on Martha’s Vineyard, Maine, and Vermont. She began playing piano at two and composing at seven, inspired by Irish folk, Loreena McKennitt, and film composers like Randy Edelman (Dragonheart) and Joe Hisaishi (Spirited Away). Her path to becoming a professional composer was solidified at fifteen during The Walden School of Music, where she composed her first chamber ensemble piece, The Whale’s Dream.

Filippi earned her Master’s in Music Composition from the Royal Danish Academy of Music in 2022, studying with Niels Rosing-Schow, Jeppe Just Christensen, and Rune Glerup. In 2023, she was commissioned by the KGL Theater to write a chamber piece for the Royal Danish Orchestra’s 575th Jubilee and to transcribe works for Østre Gasværk Teater’s Another Brick in the Wall: Part 5. She continues to work full-time as an independently contracted commissioned composer, composing for a wide variety of different ensembles, ranging anywhere from cello and guitar duo to SATB choir and cello octet to symphony orchestra.

Her work on "The Wall" subsequently led to a newly completed project with the Østre Gasværk Teater— their new musical "Olivia and the Shadow Dancers' Secret", for which she notated, orchestrated and participated in the recording of 29 new works for symphony orchestra, written by the Danish composer-songwriters Andreas Sommer, Rasmus Seebach, and Lars Ankerstjerne.

Her versatile style reflects themes of environmental conservation, nature, and animals, often with narrative inspiration from visual art or natural concepts. Her orchestral piece, Jordens Sjæl, celebrated Earth’s majesty, featuring “Earth” in 17 languages sung by musicians. Composing intuitively, she uses piano improvisation to shape her melodies and harmonies, allowing her works to evolve as living stories. 

As a composer, creative, and artist, her true purpose of creating is to: inspire a sense of joy and wonder within her audiences and the musicians performing her work. Explore the unspoken realms of her own imaginings, and to musically describe anomalous concepts derived from nature and animals, in a way that has not been attempted before. To challenge herself, and to always strive further into what she truly wants to express in her music, and to discover a new level of self-expression by delving deeper into composing about her interests in science/archaeology/rare animal species/nature, as well as through composing for unusual instrumental ensembles.

And, to compose music for anything, and everything, all at once.