Biography
Iranian-born composer Nima Fakhrara has honed his craft for nearly twenty years by scoring more than 100 feature films, multiple AAA game franchises and international television shows, as well as crafting commercial music for boutique brands. This massive body of work led acclaimed director Anna Forester to tap Nima as composer for Bad Robot’s latest feature film LOU (2022, starring Academy Award winner Allison Janney).
His unique blend of East-meets-West and command of striking, sonic textures and timbres led gaming legend David Cage to select him to compose the music for 2018’s wildly successful and critically acclaimed DETROIT BECOME HUMAN and the annoucment to the Star Wars video game franchise ECLIPSE. Other gaming credits include WARHAMMER: SPACE MARINES 2, RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS 2 and 1979 REVOLUTION.
The urgency and dark emotion of Nima’s music is well-suited for dramatic action and horror films as well, leading him to work with Golden Globe winner Hany Abu Assad (PARADISE NOW) and horror legend Kevin Williamson (SCREAM) on their films THE COURIER and SICK, respectively. Other notable credits: Jonathan Millott and Cary Murnion’s modern cult-classic BECKY, John Stalberg’s CRYPTO, and the final Wes Craven production THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS.
While his music is found all over the American media landscape, the composer’s musical journey started back in Tehran at age five. Young Nima lugged his santur up six flights of stairs for each lesson with a master instructor. This early education imbued Fakhrara with a firm grasp of Persian classical music, an unyielding discipline, and a knack for complex rhythms. After moving to the Washington DC area at age 12, Fakhrara later earned a degree in composition from California State University while simultaneously studying ethnomusicology and Music Anthropology.
Fakhrara has always been drawn to singular sounds and while studying the art of instrument making, he discovered the instrument library of iconoclastic composer Harry Partch via GRAMMY-winning guitarist and professor John Schneider. This would prove very influential, reminding him to resist constraint by convention, be it cultural or mechanical. He has since constructed several of his own instruments with the Partch instrument methods, using the original schematics while adding his own modifications. If Fakhrara can’t find the instruments to produce the sounds inside his head, he literally builds them.
Nima is the founder of Zoo Creatives and The Farm with studios located in Los Angeles, New York, Connecticut and Madrid. With an immense body of work beneath him and an insatiable desire to further his craft, Nima Fakhrara is poised to keep climbing ever higher in the world of composition for film, TV, and video games.