Akshaya Avril Tucker

Akshaya Avril Tucker (she/her) is a composer who draws inspiration from the music and dance traditions of South Asia, having trained as a cellist and Odissi dancer from a young age. Her music, called “affirming” (The Washington Post), often explores meditative and gestural soundscapes, aimed at exploring personal and collective agency, in connection with disability, the climate crisis and our relationship to one another.

She has received commissions from Carnegie Hall, Piano Spheres, Brooklyn Rider, violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Lucia Lin, and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Her music has been performed by Brooklyn Rider, A Far Cry, members of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Brightwork newmusic, Salastina Music Society, Duo Cortona, Third Coast Chamber Collective, Saili Oak, and many more. She received the Sadye J. Moss Endowed Musical Composition Prize from USC in 2023, and in 2019, she won an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. She holds an M.M. in Composition from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in Music from Brown University. She is an alumna from the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (2017-2018), and a member of the second cohort of GLFCAM’s Composing Earth program, in (2022-2023). She is currently pursuing her D.M.A. in Composition at the University of Southern California.