Yuval Medina is a composer and pianist based in New York City, working at the intersection of music with dance, film, and the concert stage. At the core of his work is a commitment to storytelling, immersive experience, and the inherently human power of music — its ability to bridge the widest divides and remind us we are in this together.

His most recent work, Meteors, premiered April 10, 2026 with the Manhattan School of Music Symphony Orchestra — the prelude to an evening-length orchestral trilogy combining orchestral music with dance, film, and theatrical staging. Other recent projects include Together Again (2025), a sold-out evening-length multimedia production featuring original works for chamber ensemble, dance, and film, which he composed, produced, and directed; The Long Goodbye (2026), a fifteen-minute brass ensemble work commissioned by the Manhattan School of Music and conducted by R. John Sheppard of the American Ballet Theatre and American Symphony Orchestra; and his orchestral rescore of BBC's Frozen Planet II, viewed over 2.8 million times on YouTube. His music was featured by Vanity Fair during the 2025 Oscars, accompanying stars including Adrien Brody, Olivia Wilde, and Andrew Garfield, in collaboration with photographer Álvaro Colóm.

Yuval is a co-founder of Ex Corde, a composer-led nonprofit presenting curated programs of contemporary composers alongside timeless masterpieces of the orchestral, chamber, and choral repertoire.

Born in Israel and raised in the United States, Yuval immigrated at age eleven with limited English and found in music a universal language through which he could be understood. As a gay artist who grew up closeted, composing became a vital means of emotional expression in moments when words failed. These early experiences continue to inspire his music and to shape his artistic voice - a voice that resists the alienation of contemporary classical culture, and instead reaches for the emotional directness, narrative arc, and the collective experience that brought audiences together in the first place.

After earning a B.S. in Computer Science from Duke University, Yuval worked as a software engineer at Google before making the decision to pursue composition full-time. He is completing his M.M. in Composition at the Manhattan School of Music, studying under Dr. J. Mark Stambaugh.

Yuval won first prize in the American Pops Orchestra's 2026 Ruth Wales du Pont Collegiate Composition Competition and was selected as a Composition Fellow for the 2026 Intimacy of Creativity festival in Hong Kong, led by Bright Sheng. He has also received awards from Tribeca New Music and the New York Youth Symphony.

You can follow @yuvalcomposer on Instagram, YouTube, or SoundCloud to stay up to date with his latest work.