Musical Recognition: A Life in Music
Ebony Tay is the first woman of color to score and produce a major theatrical feature film. An award-winning film composer, humanitarian artist, musician, and filmmaker — her career is rooted in a lifelong creative philosophy: that art in service of humanity is the highest form of achievement.
Music icon Les Garland — the visionary behind MTV, VH1, and The Box — discovered Tay and brought her work to the world’s attention. She was signed by the legendary Chris Blackwell of Island Records and Palm Pictures, joining a roster that included Bob Marley and U2. A&R titan Don Rubin — the man behind Tracy Chapman and Marcy Playground — subsequently signed Tay to Sony/Edel Records.
Early in her career, Tay was represented by the William Morris Agency and later ICM. She built her career as a successful independent solo artist — touring consistently throughout Europe, opening for Hall & Oates, India Arie, Brian McKnight, Mobb Deep, and the Gypsy Kings, and performing extensively across US college campuses. She secured major industry endorsements spanning guitar to post-production audio.
Her music reached the Top 20 of Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart with the 2005 DJ Mike Cruz remix of “Jesus By 45.” She opened Toronto Pride to an audience of over one million people, performing solo guitar. Publications including Vogue, NBC, The Cool Hunter, and Huffington Post have featured her work. Variety reviewed her debut feature at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Tay was declared a “Guitar Goddess” by Jennifer Corday in Curve Magazine (2006). She has performed and recorded alongside Eric Mercury, Kris Bowers, Ben Williams, and Shawn Pelton, the longtime drummer of the Saturday Night Live band.
Tay describes herself as a creative synergist — an artist for whom the twelve tones of the musical scale are not a ceiling but an unlocking, aligning organically with painting, photography, film, and the full spectrum of human creative expression. It is this conviction that gave rise to her creative philosophy: Sound Meets Frame.
“If Jimi Hendrix had a daughter, she’d play like you.” — Ruth Robinson, Entertainment Publicist, Representative of Ray Charles
Film: Sound Meets Frame
Most composers score to the picture. Ebony Tay scores as the picture. Her approach to film composition is rooted in a conviction few composers carry into the cutting room: that cinematography is music. That a shift in focal length is a dynamic change. That light has rhythm. That sound has frame. That the arc of a scene — from the widest establishing shot to the tightest close-up — is a musical journey waiting to be completed, not accompanied.
She calls it sonic storytelling. And it is why she describes herself not as a film composer but as a creative synergist — an artist who draws from painting, photography, writing, and composition simultaneously, because film itself demands nothing less. Of all the arts, film is the only one that takes from every discipline at once. And music, in that context, is the only chance to create something completely original in service of an original story. The score is never meant to distract from the dialogue. It is meant to womb the story.
Tay’s path to film composition began with scoring Out of the Dark — a short film produced by legendary television producer Artie Mandelberg (Executive Producer, TNT’s Saving Grace; Moonlighting) in partnership with the USC Violence Intervention Program, founded by renowned USC pediatrician Dr. Astrid Heppenstall Heger. The score helped raise awareness and funds for domestic violence causes.
In 2014, Tay completed four years of music theory and composition at The Juilliard School — funded by a private-sector scholarship from retired New York City police officers who recognized her humanitarian work. Her compositions were selected for Lincoln Center and off-Broadway debuts, including The North Star — which premiered at Juilliard’s 25th celebration of Martin Luther King, featuring Juilliard graduate and actor Corey Dorris — and Maasai Queen, a score for piano, violin, and dual percussion which premiered at an off-Broadway dance production.
As the first woman of color to score and produce a major theatrical feature film, Tay’s debut feature Hate Crime (Image Entertainment) starred Brian J. Smith (Sense8) and Bruce Davison (X-Men). The production brought her into collaboration with two-time Academy Award-winning sound designer Mark Mangini (Dune, Mad Max: Fury Road). The score raised funds for AIDS organizations, won multiple audience awards, and produced a Billboard Top 20 remix.
“Do not leave the theatre during the credits if you want to hear the best song on the soundtrack. It is Canadian producer-composer-singer Ebony Tay’s tough, bluesy tune, Jesus By 45.” — Bruce Kirkland, Toronto Sun (Former President, Toronto Film Critics Association)
She then produced and scored Sedona, featuring Frances Fisher (Titanic), Beth Grant (The Mindy Project), and Lin Shaye (Insidious). The score incorporated the sacred vocals of the Lakota and Yavapai-Apache tribes, recorded in ancient caves across Sedona. The score won a 2012 Arizona Music Award.
Tay also composed music and sound design for the web series The EXpert, featuring members of The Roots Crew (The Tonight Show).
Tay composed and owns the full publishing rights to the original score for Central & Broadway (2018) — an award-winning short film set during the Harlem Renaissance, starring Folake Olowofoyeku, later of CBS’s Bob Hearts Abishola, produced by Emmy-nominated, Peabody Award-winning producer Zackary Drucker, and featured by Condé Nast.
Legacy. Learning. Livelihood.
Before the Billboard chart. Before Juilliard. Before the film scores. There was legacy.
Tay carries Jamaican roots that run deep. Her genetic uncle, the late Honorable Winston Spaulding, Q.C., served Jamaica with distinction as Attorney General and Minister of National Security. His brother, the great Anthony “Tony” Spaulding, was personally called upon to sit with Bob Marley after the 1976 assassination attempt, to set him at ease before the legendary Smile Jamaica concert. Trench Town Rock echoed through that night. Its echo runs through her still.
She carries that legacy on her back — literally — in the form of a vintage Jamaican “oxtail” Stratocaster once owned by a member of the Wailers who played in Bob Marley’s Smile Jamaica concert.
The late James Gadson — one of the most recorded R&B drummers in history, whose groove powered records by Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, and the Jackson 5 — was her mentor and father figure, and played on many of her soundtracks. Maxayn Lewis — former Ikette, soul legend, and the singing voice of Viola Davis in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom — told her simply: “If Jimi and Tina had a baby, it would have been you.” These were not compliments. They were a passing of the torch.
From legacy came an insatiable hunger to learn. Tay pursued her musical education the way she ran the 800 meters — with discipline, with purpose, and with everything she had. At The Juilliard School — alma mater of John Williams, Jon Batiste, and Nina Simone — she studied music theory and composition, funded by a private-sector scholarship from retired New York City police officers who recognized her humanitarian work. She was honored as Spotlight Student of the Year by The Juilliard School Evening Division in both 2011 and 2012. She then completed her degree in Film and Electronic Arts at Cal State Long Beach — alma mater of Steven Spielberg — graduating with distinction as a Guardian Scholar, while living with CRPS every single day.
Her story has been recognized by Cal State Long Beach in their Beach Voices series and by the Long Beach Current.
Two institutions. One philosophy: Sound Meets Frame.
Tay has always worked for herself. Inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of Oprah Winfrey and the unbossed independence of Shirley Chisholm — the first Black woman elected to Congress — she operated from the very beginning as a fully independent artist: owning her masters, retaining her publishing rights, and turning down record deals that would have taken both. She built her own independent production enterprise. She answered to no one but the work — and the work was always in service of quality and doing good.
She worked with producers for Beck, Perry Farrell, the Rolling Stones, and Nine Inch Nails — including Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Grammy-winning drummer Chris Vrenna, founding member of Nine Inch Nails. She performed at the Zihuatanejo Guitar Festival. She opened Toronto Pride to over one million people. She toured Europe, sold out the Troubadour, and performed across hundreds of US college campuses. Major industry endorsements spanning guitar to post-production audio recognized her standing as a working professional artist.
She was on the rise. Then she was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. CRPS changed everything.
Unreleased recordings and archival footage — including Jamaican Prayer and Reload, both featuring the legendary James Gadson (Circa 2019) — are being remastered and curated by a cross-generational team on behalf of Ebony Tay, under From the Six String Vault.
Follow Ebony Tay on Instagram, Youtube, Soundcloud, and IMDB.
