About
Manar Hashmi is a composer, engraver, orchestrator, and all-around music person, with projects ranging from film and TV scores to chamber music to opera.
While a large portion of her musical output is in the contemporary classical genre, she is equally drawn to applied composition, and writes music for films, podcasts, theater, and other multimedia formats. She is equally at home writing for the voice, acoustic instruments, or MIDI-based virtual instruments, and prioritizes her relationships with performers above all else.
Manar attended Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she studied with some of the most revered composers of our time, including Joan Tower, Jessie Montgomery, Missy Mazzoli, and George Tsontakis. Her film scoring mentors are James Sizemore and Mark Baechle. Manar also studied conducting with James Bagwell, and conducted premieres of her own works and her colleagues’—including film scores (both live and in-studio) and an opera by Lucy Berger and Zeke Morgan.
She had the privilege of working with the Da Capo Chamber Players, tenor Ryan Michki, poet and author Magdalena Gomez, composer Jessica Jones, and others.
Manar’s recent projects have been diverse. In the fall of 2023, she was the composer for the 6-episode absurd comedy podcast “Don’t Worry!” written by Kiana Brizendine, Lydia Stauffer, and Rowan Levi. She was on the production team as well as the composer for the Rhinebeck Theater Society’s celebration of Maya Angelou, titled “Still We Rise.” She co-composed the score for Milo Zimmerman-Bence’s film Apologoi, and had the privilege of conducting the recording session and mixing the score.
She has been commissioned by ensembles and soloists around the United States, including the Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy’s chamber orchestra, for whom she composed “We Sail at Sunrise”; Bassoonist Henry Mielarczyk, for whom she composed “I Should Be Phone Banking”; the Euterpe Ensemble, for whom she composed “Condor”; and the chamber choir Novi Cantori. She was commissioned to write a fixed-media composition as part of “Measure of Work: Sounds of Labor in Lowell.” Most recently, Manar wrote “Pharos” for The Orchestra Now, which was premiered under the baton of Leon Botstein at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.
She proofread the scores for several Netflix and Hulu releases, as well as live-to-picture scores for concert versions of The Silence of the Lambs, which was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the London Soundtrack Festival, and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers—both composed by Howard Shore.
As a performer, Manar specializes in Baroque and Early music, particularly the music of Antonio Vivaldi. She played violin and viola in the Euridice Baroque Ensemble, the Euterpe Ensemble, and the Bard Baroque Ensemble, at venues such as the Bezanson Recital Hall, the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.
Photograph by Chris Kayden