Dara Taylor

Dara Taylor is a Sundance Institute alumna and HMMA-Winning composer for film and television based in Los Angeles. She has composed music for a wide variety of Independent thrillers, dramas, comedies such as the Karen Allen starred Colewell and Turner Risk, and has contributed additional music and score production for large studio productions like A Bad Mom's Christmas, Shaft, Amazon's The Boys, Netflix's Lost in Space, and more. In 2015, she was nominated for a Hollywood Music in Media Award for her score on the film Undetectable. In 2016, she was one of the composers asked to take part in Women in Film's Women Composers in Media concert. In 2018, Dara was chosen as a fellow for the Sundance Institute Composers Lab. In 2019, Dara was chosen as one the BMI Conducting for Composers Fellows and won a Hollywood Music in Media Award for her score for Colewell. Dara, born in Poughkeepsie, NY and raised in Lockport, NY, spent most of her formative years in gospel church choirs as well as school choruses, bands, and musicals. Primarily a vocalist, she studied classical voice as a Mezzo-Soprano under Judith Kellock at Cornell University. Throughout college Dara became increasingly drawn towards composition and studied independently with Zachary Wadsworth and Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Stucky. After graduating cum laude in Music and Psychology from Cornell in 2009, Dara went on to study Film Music Composition under Mark Suozzo at New York University where she received a Masters of Music in 2011. Dara lives in Los Angeles, CA working on studio and independent projects and is highly active in the composing community. Dara also is a proud Industry Relations committee member for the Composers Diversity Collective. Dara is a member of the Television Academy, Society of Composers and Lyricists, Composers Diversity Collective, Alliance of Women Film Composers, Women in Media, and BMI.