Ariel Marx

American composer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ariel Marx is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer of music for film and television. She is known for her scores of the 2020 film Shiva Baby, and National Geographic's miniseries A Small Light, which earned her an Emmy nomination in 2023.

Early life and education

Ariel 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.[1]

Marx was accepted into the NYU Music Theory and Composition program, from which she graduated in 2015.[2] She eventually narrowed her focus to music composition for film and television after repeatedly collaborating with filmmakers from various schools throughout the city.[3]

Career

While enrolled at NYU, Marx was accepted to the Columbia/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop,[when?] where she wrote the music for the short film Dear Mother, and received the Mancini Music Fellowship award for "Most Promising Composer."[4][5] 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.[6] 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.[7]

Marx's career reached a turning point in 2020 when she was selected to score Emma Seligman's debut feature film, Shiva Baby.[8] The critically acclaimed indie film, starring Rachel Sennott, was widely praised for Marx's sparse, but textured and dissident score.[9] Following this, Marx scored her first major television project, Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, a five-part true crime docuseries.[10] 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.[11]

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.[12][13] 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.[14] Although the score was recorded remotely, Marx seamlessly weaved together a playful and experimental soundscape.[14]

She wrote the score for the 2025 Australian family drama film, Kangaroo Island.[15]

Recognition and awards

Marx received the Mancini Music Fellowship award for "Most Promising Composer" for her score of the short film Dear Mother while attending the Columbia/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop.[4]

Her score for Candy, described as both bewitching and sweet, was named third best score of the year on IndieWire's Best TV Scores of 2022 list.[16]

In 2023, 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",[17][1] and again in 2025 for her scores for the Hulu miniseries Dying for Sex and the Netflix anthology series Black Mirror.[18]

She was nominated for Best Score at the 2026 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards for Kangaroo Island.[19]

Select television credits

Selected film credits

See also

References

External links

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