the story of Connor Cook

Connor Cook is a film composer living in Los Angeles. She grew up in North Carolina, playing bluegrass and Irish music, which greatly informed her growing compositional style. Connor plays button and piano accordion, mandolin, banjo, DADGAD guitar, and piano. She also spent 3 years playing in a steel drum band which further informed her compositional voice. She got her BM in Music Theory and Composition from Appalachian State University. She then attended Columbia College Chicago to get her MFA in Music Composition For the Screen. It was at CCC that Connor met her frequent collaborator and co-composer Alexa L. Borden. Connor has written music for many varied projects, and her most favorite things to work on are unique and eclectic projects with a lot of heart. Her greatest dream is to work on projects that mean something- projects with stories that matter to her and make her want to wake up in the morning. Connor especially loves weird independent cinema and experimental animation.

Connor is a 2020 Sundance Film Music in Animation Fellow (mentorship included composers Christophe Beck, Germaine Franco, and Arturo Rodriguez, and producer Phil Lord and animator Julia Pott.) Connor is also a 2021-2022 Sundance Interdisciplinary Program The Art of Practice Music/Composing Fellow. Her third Sundance fellowship was the 2022 Sundance Mass MoCA Interdisciplinary Lab as a Composing Fellow. In 2022, Connor was awarded a Sundance/MacArthur Foundation Journalism Grant for her composition project “The Act of Remembering”, a music journalism project involving the scoring of people’s beloved saved voicemails. She was a mentee in the inaugural 2019 Alliance for Women Film Composers Mentorship Program studying under Miriam Cutler. Connor has served on the Spotlight Committee for The AWFC for several years, and has interviewed many composers about their careers. She started on the administration team behind the scenes, and Connor was recently elected, and now serves on the Board of Directors for the Alliance for Women Film Composers (2023-2024 term). Connor is a 2023 and 2024 Mentor in the ScreenCraft Works Cross Border Mentorship Scheme, a 9 month mentorship program. She is a member of The SCL (Society for Composers and Lyricists) and the FCSL (Female Composer Safety League).