Composer Shoshana was born into a family of professional and amateur musicians. Many of her first memories involve music, whether sitting at the piano with her father, falling asleep to Mozart Sonatas at night in place of kids’ lullabies, or singing along to Broadway and Disney Musicals with her mom.

 

Shoshana attended Phillip Shore Elementary School for the Performing Arts and Orange Grove Middle School for the Performing Arts in Tampa, Florida. She went to Tampa Preparatory School for high school, which has an excellent musical theatre program headed by Scott Warfel.

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Shoshana began playing classical piano at age 4 and by age 11 had given over 100 recitals and had won or placed in several concerto competitions.

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Shoshana started dancing ballet at age 3 and had performed in several traveling productions including with the Miami City Ballet and the Moscow Ballet by age 8. After elementary school she added modern, tap, and jazz. In middle and high school she had the opportunity to do choreography both through school and with her dance troupe. Shoshana has loved musical theatre from the beginning and acted in school and community musical theatre productions from preschool through high school. In addition to piano, Shoshana studied harp for 5 years, and viola for 3 years.

 

Shoshana spent four summers at Interlochen Arts Camp, mostly participating in the camp’s piano and dance programs, though she also participated in theatre.

 

These broad performing arts childhood experiences exposed her to different styles of composition and also helped her approach music from different perspectives.

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She wrote her first composition “Animal Band” at age 6. It won the Florida Reflections Competition and was performed by the steel drum band Panacea, the University of South Florida’s Symphonic Band and a professional piano duo, whose performance was covered by the Tampa Tribune.

 

Shoshana's primary piano teacher until college was Olga Llano Khuel-White. She received her BA from Loyola University New Orleans, she studied piano with H. Jac McCracken, participated in the student composition forum supervised by Dr. Janna Saslaw, and had a string quartet “Little Waves” performed. She also studied theory and musicianship with harpist Rachel Van Voorhees.

 

Shoshana worked as a company pianist for Loyola Ballet throughout her time at the University and would play the regular ballet repertoire as well as original compositions and improvisations. She also worked as a freelance collaborative pianist in the New Orleans area, and was active in Loyola's chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota, a women's music fraternity. Shoshana's thesis included studies of Bossa nova music and performances of songs by Antônio Carlos Jobim as well as original songs.

 

About halfway through school, Shoshana was  introduced to Jazz producer John Snyder, who directs Loyola’s Music Industries Studies department. Snyder encouraged her to continue composing original music, and helped her produce a demo of original songs while finding opportunities to perform in New Orleans.

 

Since moving to New York Shoshana has studied songwriting with Billy Seidman and composition with Gene Pritsker.

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She has been commissioned to write for musical theatre, commercial, and film projects:

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In December 2017 she was asked to score a documentary shorts series about therapy dogs “Canine Heroes” by photographer and filmmaker Lynn Millspaugh. Production started in 2017 and the project is expected to start screening in 2019.

 

She has also scored commercial vignettes and promotional videos for corporate clients including creative agencies and manufacturing companies.

 

In April 2018, she was commissioned by Stygian Productions to write the music for a new musical, Fear of Dancing (Book and Lyrics by Ken Threet, Directed by Susan Gordon-Clark), which is going into rehearsals this fall, and expected to run starting in 2019.

 

She is also working on music for an original ballet called “Homeland”.

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In September 2018, Shoshana was accepted into the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, a program widely recognized as the premiere training ground for emerging musical theatre composers.

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Current projects include:

Out of the Ice: Musical Comedy

Bluebeard: Interdisciplinary Musical Theater and Ballet Tragedy

Canine Heroes: Documentary Film Project

Fear of Dancing: Immersive Musical "Dramedy"

Homeland: Ballet Shorts Series