Amanda Lee Falkenberg

Composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg resides in Dubai, where she has composed extensively for the screen while achieving a notable advance into orchestral-choral writing through her seven-movement Moons Symphony. Born January 12, 1976, she spent her childhood in Australia’s Barossa Valley, where her parents—though not professional musicians—nurtured a broad appreciation for music that ranged from the classical repertoire to the film Singin’ in the Rain. She began piano studies at two and a half and later pursued concert-piano ambitions at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide. After graduation she joined The Australian Ballet as a dance accompanist; the experience of supplying generic rehearsal scores prompted her to create movement-specific pieces, ultimately steering her toward composition. More than 120 such works for dancers in training were gathered into the three-part CD series “Moving with Music,” and in 2003 she completed the thirty-minute ballet Edge of the World, commissioned for the International Barossa Music Festival and performed there by Leigh Warren and dancers.

Film assignments have included the 2008 Emirati feature Arabian Sands, adapted from Wilfred Thesiger’s 1959 book, and a thirteen-part animated series featuring voice-overs by actress Lucy Liu. Several albums devoted to her screen music have appeared. Drawing inspiration from visual imagery, she has also produced concert works such as the 2017 orchestral suite Sea Trilogy—whose premiere she conducted with the London Film Music Orchestra at its Gala Concert—and the piano concerto Crossing of the Crescent Moon. Five years of research into the solar system’s moons preceded the 2020 completion of The Moons Symphony, an award-winning score later recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices under Marin Alsop and issued by Signum Classics in 2022.