Bio

I'm Alison Cole — a Sydney-based composer, sound designer, and researcher with over two decades of international work across film, television, ballet, installation, and commercial media.

My screen music has screened at Cannes, Berlin, and the Sydney Film Festival, and recent credits include a Disney+ limited series and feature film Electric Feel (2026). I'm a Tropfest winner, a multiple media industry award recipient, and a multiple ProMax ANZ Best Composition recipient.

My work covers a lot of creative ground — from composing electro-acoustic art music, scoring films and television series, to composing for ballet, creating sonic branding, designing sound for immersive installations, and producing electronic music. I've written music for more than 50 film and television productions, and my work is performed and broadcast internationally. I've performed alongside ARIA Award–winning electronic artists across Australia and internationally, and my installation work has featured at Vivid Sydney and the Burning Man Main Arena.

Recent commissions include projects for The Australian Ballet, Disney+, and SBS. In 2025, I founded Signature Sound, Australia's first female-led screen and experiential composition studio.

I'm also a researcher, and for me the two things have always been inseparable. I hold a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and my research explores how sound connects us to place, memory, and history — how a recording, a texture, or a landscape can carry meaning across time. That work has led to a series of multimedia sound installations, including Fabric of Memory (2025), which weaves together archival recordings, spatial sound, and live composition.

Whatever the project, I'm drawn to the same questions: how does sound shape the way we experience the world, and how can music make that feeling land? Collaboration, curiosity, and a love of new technology are usually somewhere in the mix.