Ariel Marx

Early life

Marx had an interest in playing and writing music from a young age, but studied ethnomusicology and plant biology during her time as an undergraduate at Hampshire College. After graduating, she pursued a growing interest in music composition, spending several years enrolled in private lessons to prepare for graduate school applications in film scoring.^[2] Marx was accepted into the NYU Music Theory and Composition program, from which she graduated in 2015.^[3] She eventually narrowed her focus to music composition for film and television after repeatedly collaborating with filmmakers from various schools throughout the city.^[4]

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Career

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Perspective

While enrolled at NYU, Marx was accepted to the Columbia/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop, where she wrote the music for the short film Dear Mother, and received the Mancini Music Fellowship award for “Most Promising Composer.”^[5]^[6] Dear Mother co-director Reka Posta introduced Marx to writer and director Jennifer Fox, who she worked with to compose the music for Fox's film, The Tale, starring Laura Dern.^[7] The Tale was screened at the 2018 Tribeca Festival alongside So You Like the Neighborhood and To Dust, both of which were also scored by Marx.^[8]

Marx's career reached a turning point in 2020 when she was selected to score Emma Seligman's debut feature film, Shiva Baby.^[9] The critically acclaimed indie film, starring Rachel Sennott, was widely praised for Marx's sparse, but textured and dissident score.^[10] Following this, Marx scored her first major television project, Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, a five-part true crime docuseries.^[11] Her work attracted the attention of writers Robin Veith, Nick Antosca, and Michael Uppendahl, who Marx then collaborated with to compose the score for Candy, which aired on Hulu.^[12] Candy's score, described as both bewitching and sweet, was named third best score of the year on IndieWire's Best TV Scores of 2022 list.^[13]

Beginning in late 2022, Marx spent five months composing the score for National Geographic's A Small Light after being selected for the project by director Susanna Fogel.^[14] To help tell the story of Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who hid Anne Frank, Marx assembled a team of four musicians to pair with her own instrumentations, which included percussion, violin, cello, guitar, and synth.^[15] Although the score was recorded remotely, Marx seamlessly weaved together a playful and experimental soundscape.^[15] For her work on A Small Light, Marx received an Emmy nomination in the category of “Outstanding Music Composition For A Limited Or Anthology Series, Movie Or Special."^[16]

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Early life

Career

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See also

References

External links

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