Hi Daria, thanks for joining us today! I always like to start my interviews with a backstory question- how did you get started in music, and how did you get to right here right now?

I came to the US ten years ago, from Russia. I have a very strong classical foundation there – I earned my master’s degree in choral conducting from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. But even though my training was rigorously classical, from early on I was drawn to music for film and theatre, and already in Russia I was working in those fields.

That pull is what brought me here: I was accepted into the Post-Graduate Diploma program in Technology and Applied Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music – a program focusing on music production for film and video games. I came for that, and I stayed, and started working in the industry.

SFCM gave me real grounding in music technology, and just as importantly it gave me strong connections and a genuine foothold in my career. Since then I’ve worked across both the video game and film industries – as an orchestrator, as a composer, and as a session conductor.

So what I have now is a combination I value a lot: a deep classical education paired with modern music technology. My current work is where those two things meet.

You recently scored the microdrama series Playback- congratulations! Can you tell us more about the project, and what the creative flow was like for this?

Playback was a fascinating project! It was my first time working in the microdrama format, and what made it even more interesting is that it’s also a musical. There was a songwriter on the project, Keeley Bumford – known professionally as Dresage – handling the songs, and I wrote the score.

The director, Scott Brown, reached out to me back in December 2025, and we started working in February. It premiered on April 17, 2026. There’s a lot of music in it, across a lot of different genres, and it was new for me to work in this format, because you still have to write thematically – you’re still developing themes, still writing leitmotifs – but the form is such that each episode is very short. So you have to fit a complete musical thought into a very compressed span of time.

The director’s vision was to make a genuinely high-quality product – strong music, strong cast, strong story – and the project really did come out that way. The action moves very fast, so the music has to help the audience register what’s happening on screen, because there are so many events packed into a short stretch of time.

I’m curious to hear more about your video game work- I see you made music and sound design for Diner Dash Adventures and Cooking Dash, both mobile games. What was this experience like for you, and how does your process differ for games (if it does differ?)

It actually started while I was still a conservatory student. In my second semester I began working with my professor, Dren McDonald, on Cooking Dash, helping him with production – I wrote additional music and also did some sound design. Then, about two years after I finished the conservatory, we started working together on Diner Dash Adventures, and at a certain point it transitioned fully to me. I wrote the music and did the sound design.

Writing music for games – for mobile games in particular – is a somewhat different process than writing for film, because the development isn’t linear. We write loops, we write transitions, we write stingers. And with every release of the game, every month, we’d write in a different genre – the game would be set in different countries, or in an invented world. That was a really fun process too, because you could draw on all kinds of world instruments and explore different musical styles.

In addition to composing, you’re also an arranger and orchestrator- working on projects with Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostineli (The Witcher and One Piece from Netflix, NBC drama The Thing About Pam, and more). You also orchestrated a headliner of the 2021 Krakow Film Music Festival! Can you please speak more on this side of your career and creative process?

Orchestration is a huge part of my work, I’ve been doing it for a long time – I started back in Russia, in my early twenties.

With Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli, the first thing we worked on together was the Witcher Suite for the Krakow Film Festival (a work based on The Witcher Netflix TV show soundtrack). We’ve collaborated a great deal ever since and it has been an incredible experience for me. 

What I love about this work is that when I orchestrate for other composers, it enriches me as a musician because I get to work with incredible music. And of course, the orchestra itself is something I’m deeply devoted to. This year I worked on the live-action One Piece season two for Netflix, orchestrating for Sonya and Giona – an enormous project with a huge amount of music, a large orchestra and choir. 

Another big part of my orchestration work: when we’re recording an orchestra in Los Angeles, I very often conduct the sessions myself. That comes directly out of my first training – after all, my master’s degree was in conducting.

A big pillar of our work here at the AWFC is community- how do you feel community impacts your work, and what do you find most meaningful about community- especially in the arts?

When you’re working on a project as large as One Piece, it’s simply impossible to do it alone – the volume of music is enormous.

I have a few go-to assistants I bring in on the big projects. Most of them came to me as former students from the SF conservatory – they were my students once. Many of them are international women, and we work as one team. They support me tremendously, and without them these large projects simply wouldn’t be possible.

I should also mention that I’ve been teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory for nine years now – composition and orchestration for media composers, all within the Technology and Applied Composition program. That’s a community of students, and they’re our future – the people I might, at some point, hire onto a project. We support one another; it’s a real network. And I love passing on what I know, and feeling that I’m supporting the next generation of composers.

Is there anything coming up for you that you’d like to share with us? What sort of things are exciting you lately?

I’m in the process of finishing orchestration and arrangements for a big video game – I can’t say the title yet, but it’ll be coming out this year. I’m also writing a program of arrangements for large symphony orchestra and electronics.

And more broadly, I’m always looking for new projects – whether that’s original music or orchestration. Those are the two sides of my work I care about most, and I’m always open to the next one.

Interview by Connor Cook

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