Celisse is a film/media composer based near San Francisco, California. She is a bassist and Philippine instrumentalist whose compositions cover a range of genres, including grand orchestral scores, flowing synth textures, upbeat jazz fusion, and traditional instrumentation. Recent composing credits include Trent Jones' Footage Under Fire and Timothy Mark Davis' Thank You, Places!. Celisse also works as a score producer, managing workflows and coordinating between composers and production teams, with her latest score producing work being on the audiobook for TJ Cooper's A Bond of Silver - A Shadow's Vendetta and the Original Score Album for Felipe Cagno's comic book series The Few and Cursed.

 

From a young age, Celisse trained classically in piano and voice. She has been playing bass for over 15 years, performing in both folk and orchestral ensembles and most recently, as the bassist in original musical A Summer in Madtown. Celisse grew up immersed in Philippine music through her involvement with Haranistas de Manila, a premier Philippine ethnic percussion and Rondalla ensemble in California. At age 10, she joined the group as its youngest principal musician, playing bass and kulintang. Since then, she continues to perform with Haranistas de Manila, participates in orchestras as a bassist and cellist, and has played as a session musician for other composers.

 

A natural storyteller since childhood, Celisse was drawn by the power of music in telling stories without words, especially through film and television. While pursuing her BFA in Film Editing and Film Music at Chapman University and her MM in Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music, Celisse was able to score student films and collaborate with directors both in-person and remotely. She continues to write music for short and feature-length films, both narrative and documentary, and has been awarded for her work at film festivals both in the United States and internationally.

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