KATYA RICHARDSON is an Emmy-winning composer and pianist from Los Angeles.
Currently the composer-in-residence at Breakwater Studios, Richardson composed the score alongside Kris Bowers for the 2024 Oscar-winning film The Last Repair Shop, which earned her a Critics’ Choice Documentary Award nomination and an ASCAP Composers’ Choice Nomination for Documentary Score of the Year. Most recently, she scored ESPN 30 for 30 doc, Motorcycle Mary, winning Best Score from the Hollywood Music in Media Awards and a David Raksin Emerging Talent Award nomination from the Society of Composers and Lyricists. In 2024, she was recognized for her work on the PBS special, Keeping the Pinelands, for which she won an Emmy for Best Composition. Prior to scoring three critically acclaimed documentaries, Richardson won her first Hollywood Music in Media Award for her score to the Emmy-nominated New York Times Op-Doc, Mink!.
Richardson is also known for her collaborations in modern dance. She has premiered pieces at the Royal Opera House in London and has composed for the Joffrey Ballet, Norwegian National Ballet, and Bayerisches Staatsballett in Munich. With over 100k streams on Spotify, her most recent ballet Vortex, is a 75-minute collaboration with esteemed British choreographer Russell Maliphant OBE, which debuted at Sadler’s Wells in London. Her upcoming project, a docu-dance feature about the war in Ukraine, was executive-produced by the legendary ballerina Misty Copeland.
Growing up in a musical family, Katya was immersed in the scores of Henry Mancini and Sergei Prokofiev from a young age. At 13 years old, Richardson was selected for the two-year intensive LA Phil Composer Fellowship Program and premiered her piece, Undefined, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall. In 2016, she composed a new work, Fanfare for Orchestra, exclusively for the Hollywood Bowl Opening Night / Steely Dan concert, conducted by Thomas Wilkins.
Richardson studied Composition with Ted Hearne and Frank Ticheli at the University of Southern California and minored in Cinematic Arts. She is a Trustee Scholarship recipient and Renaissance Scholar.