Biography

Alonso Malik Pirio is a composer for media, as well as a performer and music director, whose work blends orchestral, jazz, and African diasporic traditions with contemporary scoring techniques, including synths, experimental textures, and hybrid orchestration. He has scored projects including the Hulu feature HAINT, and is a Grammy-winning choral artist (The Passion of Yeshua) and a Grammy-nominated music collaborator (The Color Purple). Classically trained at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, he has built a multifaceted career spanning film scoring, concert composition, and live performance.

As a media composer, Alonso’s work has been featured at major festivals including Tribeca, BFI, SeriesFest, NewFilmmakers Los Angeles, and the Afro Animation Summit. His recent work includes the Hulu film HAINT (2025), for which he traveled to collaborate and record with the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters, bringing a deeply rooted cultural and sonic authenticity to the score. He has also scored award-winning films such as Osun (2023), winner of a Cooper Award, as well as Special Delivery (2021) and All I Know (2020), alongside a wide range of animated and live-action projects across film, television, and digital media.

Alonso’s concert compositions explore themes of nature, society, and the African diaspora, blending jazz and impressionist influences with contemporary classical forms. He served as composer-in-residence at Western Michigan University, where they premiered his flute concerto: Migration, marking his orchestral premiere and supported by a Presidential Innovation Grant. His works have also been performed internationally, and he has received commissions from artists and institutions including ABRSM, Martha Councell-Vargas, Myles Blakemore, Diversify the Stand: Winds of Change, and Art Song for New Beginnings.

Alonso is a versatile performer and multi-instrumentalist, equally at home conducting pit orchestras, performing on keyboards, or singing. He has conducted and music-directed ensembles including the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters and the South Side Symphony, and appeared on stage as Jimmy Powers in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. He has conducted and played keyboards for the five-time Tony Award-winning A Christmas Carol at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, performed with the LA Opera, and is a Grammy-winning choral artist, having sung on The Passion of Yeshua with the UCLA Chamber Singers. Alonso has recorded keyboards for artists including Chloe x Halle, Andra Day, and Marcus Norris, as well as on shows for Netflix (BANDI) and Apple TV+ (Lady in the Lake), and performed in concert with ensembles ranging from the Buffalo and Cape Cod Philharmonics to theater soul and jazz artists such as Stephen Schwartz, Kenny Burrell, Alex Newell and Julius Thomas III.

Alonso is a trusted collaborator on high-profile music productions. He served as lead transcriber on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack to The Color Purple (2025), as well as the Broadway musical Lempicka, and is the head music and tech assistant for Marcus Norris, contributing to the BMI Streaming Series Award-winning score for Lady in the Lake (Apple TV+) and the score for BANDI (Netflix), in addition to providing music direction, technical expertise, and creative support across film, television, and live performance projects.

As an educator, Alonso brings his expertise as a composer, performer, and music director to the classroom, teaching Media Music and Concert Music/Arranging at Culver City High School’s AVPA Department. When he’s not teaching or performing, he enjoys hiking and traveling, finding inspiration in both the landscapes of Los Angeles, his home city, and the cultures he experiences around the world.
- IMDb mini biography by: Alonso Malik Pirio