Joy Ngiaw
Joy Ngiaw is an Emmy®-nominated composer film and television composer. She served as the composer for Apple TV+’s sci-fi adventure trilogy WondLa. Her score for WondLa was nominated for a Children's and Family Emmy Award for Best Music Direction and Composition for an Animated Program, and was featured in IndieWire’s 'Best TV Scores of the Year, According to Our Composers Survey', alongside White Lotus and Severance.
Her score for Apple TV+ and Skydance's debut animation Blush has won Best Music Award from Hollywood Music in Media and was nominated for an Annie. She also scored Skydance Animation's inaugural studio logo.
Among her other projects include Netflix and CBS's TV show Glamorous, Walt Disney Animation Studio's Short Circuit: Jing Hua, and Netflix's Rescued by Ruby.
Joy was named a BAFTA Breakthrough USA honoree in 2024. She was also featured on Apple 'Here's to the Dreamers' campaign, spotlighting ambitious creative talent across Southeast Asia.
Early life and education
Joy was born in Pahang, Malaysia and raised in Shanghai, China. She started playing classical piano at the age of 6, and had played piano for the New Shanghai Orchestra in her high school years. She then attended Berklee College of Music for a major in Film Scoring and minor in Video Game Scoring. At Berklee College of Music, Joy was one of the eight students chosen to compose a new score for F.W. Murnau's 1922 Classic, Nosferatu, which was performed by the Boston Pops at Boston Symphony Hall on Friday, October 30, 2015.Career
After moving to Los Angeles in 2016, she worked in the music department for television series such as Legion, Cobra Kai, The Night Of, films Impractical Jokers: The Movie, and video games What Remains of Edith Finch.Joy scored Skydance Animation's first short film Blush, executive produced by David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and John Lasseter. Her score had won the 2021 Hollywood Music in Media awards for Best Music, and nominated for an Annie award for Outstanding Achievement for Music in an Animated Television/Media Production. In 2022, she was also nominated with the inaugural David Raskin Emerging Talent award by the Society of Composers and Lyricists. She then went on to score Skydance Animation studio's first studio logo. The animated sequence made its debut on the studios' first feature Luck, and will be attached to Skydance's animated film slate, which includes the Alan Menken-scored Spellbound, Nathan Greno's Swapped and Brad Bird's Ray Gunn, going forward. She is also the composer for Skydance Animation's TV series WondLa, an animated sci-fi fantasy television series based on the books The Search for WondLa, A Hero for WondLa, and The Battle for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi.
In 2023, she scored her first episodic TV series, Netflix's Glamorous, created by Jordon Nardino and starring Kim Cattrall and Miss Benny. Her score was released by Lakeshore Records on July 7, 2023.
Her soundtrack for Skydance Animation's TV series WondLa was released by Milan Records on June 28, 2024.