Ronit Kirchman is a composer, music producer, songwriter, conductor, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. She composes music for film and television, theater and dance, multimedia installations, and the concert stage. She is also an accomplished visual artist and author. Recognized in the press as “an extremely original voice” with “a virtuoso touch”, and “a truly unique force in the entertainment industry”, Ronit has gained acclaim for her innovative, genre-bending score for the Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated series The Sinner. Her music for The Sinner was named one of IndieWire's Best TV Scores two years in a row. Ronit is currently scoring the popular show Pretty Little Liars: Summer School (Max) and recently completed the ambitious sci-fi drama Fractal. Her score for Evil Eye, a dramatic thriller feature from Blumhouse TV and Amazon Studios and executive produced by Priyanka Chopra Jonas, was also awarded a 2021 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Outstanding Score - TV Movie/Streamed. Other projects include her innovative hybrid score for the dystopian thriller series Limetown (Peacock), based on the hit podcast; and a wide-ranging trail of films and documentaries, including Manscaping, Zen and the Art of Dying, Finding Neighbors, and The Skin I'm In, as well as The Golden Age of Fish, Say You Love Me, and Gowanus, Brooklyn among many others. Ronit’s soundtracks and composition albums are commercially available through Lakeshore Records and Wild River Records.
Kirchman is known for her impressive stylistic breadth, depth, and originality; her cutting-edge techniques; and her remarkable multi-disciplinary understanding of storytelling and creative collaboration. Ronit was the first-ever recipient of the Sundance Institute Time Warner Foundation Fellowship in Film Music, and has also been awarded the New Music USA Reel Change Grant, Sundance Composers Lab and Documentary Composers Lab Fellowships, BMI Conductors Fellowship, and a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum.
Ronit is an innovative violinist whose virtuosity comes through a continually expanding stylistic palette and sonic range. She began playing at the age of four, and trained with some of the world’s finest violinists, including Erick Friedman, the protégé of Jascha Heifetz, and Zvi Zeitlin. In addition to the violin, Ronit plays an electric 7-string violin which extends below the cello range. She performs as a singer, guitarist, and on various other stringed instruments as well as computers, electronics, and percussion. Solo violin performances by Ronit can be heard on the scores for The Finest Hours, Now You See Me, Jessabelle, and the Emmy-nominated Ring of Fire, among many others.
Ronit’s film scoring work spans many narrative genres and musical styles. Equally at home writing for large acoustic ensembles, minting a pop hook, programming electronics, and working with master improvisers, Ronit brings great versatility, imagination, and precision to all of her scoring projects. Her discography includes work as a performer, producer and arranger, with recordings on Lakeshore Records, Wild River Records, Rounder, Rhino, Nine Winds, pfMentum, emr, Meta Records, Innova, Biophilia, and Vitamin. She performs and records internationally in many contexts, including free improvisation, classical, live electronica, rock, pop, jazz, world, blues, and country. Her collaborators have included such notable artists as Torsten Müller, Anne LeBaron, Nels Cline, Fred Frith, Bertram Turetzky, Wolfgang Fuchs, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Pat Thomas, John Edwards, Philipp Wachsmann, Wadada Leo Smith, Adam Rudolph, Paul Lytton, Vinny Golia, and alt-country band Hem. She was the co-curator and featured performer at Film Music Remix at the Sundance Film Festival.
Kirchman’s theater music scores include Stop Kiss (LA), a chamber opera, and productions with the Lincoln Center Theater Directors’ Lab, Target Margin Theater, and Peculiar Works in New York City. Her concert works include A Greenwood Quartet, the inaugural commission for the Deborah Sherr Commissioning Award; Reparts, an orchestral piece premiered by the New Century Players of Los Angeles; and Departures, which pairs a jazz ensemble with live audiovisual computer instruments using the narrative of Casablanca and visual film elements as the framework for improvisation. Ronit is also a pioneer in re-imagining film scores for live performance in her ongoing Remix Anatomy series, with performances sponsored by FilmForum Los Angeles and the Sundance Institute. She has also had the pleasure of conducting her film scores with live orchestra at The Wiltern with The Future Is Female concert series and other gala presentations.
Ronit is also active as an educator and mentor. As a board member of the Alliance for Women Film Composers, she co-founded its world-class Mentorship Program and served as one of its mentors. She has also been tapped to be a Composer-In-Residence at Columbia College Chicago, where she mentored MFA film scoring students and taught courses in systems-based composition. Ronit has been a guest lecturer at CalArts, Tufts, and Occidental College, as well as festivals such as FMP/Berlin, on various topics including film scoring, narrative and movement-based approaches to musical improvisation, Feldenkrais, and performance practice.
Ronit graduated magna cum laude from Yale and holds an MFA in Composition/New Media from California Institute of the Arts. As an alumna of the Sundance Composers Labs, Ronit returned to the lab several times to contribute her talents as a creative advisor, making herself available for collaboration in recording sessions and highlighting some of the potentials of working with creative musicians on narrative projects.
