Tanya Ekanayaka

Sri Lankan British composer-pianist Tanya Ekanayaka was born in Sri Lanka in 1977. She began piano lessons at the age of five and made her recital debut at 12. She went on to study with a number of acclaimed musicians, including conductor and organist John Kitchen and composer Nigel Osborne. Classically trained but rooted in the gamut of world music, particularly South Asian, Ekanayaka also has an academic background in literature, linguistics, musicology, and critical theory, and has a PhD from Edinburgh University. She is also a record producer and produces her own albums. Ekanayaka composes exclusively for solo piano—her works are unscored and exist solely in recorded format. Her debut album, Reinventions – Rhapsodies for Piano (2015), adapts Sri Lankan traditional and folk music while 2023’s 18 Piano Sutras & 25 South Asian Pianisms is inspired by 40 languages across the world, including many that are rare and endangered.