ABOUT
Recognized on CBC’s 30 Under 30 Classical Musicians as an emerging voice in contemporary music, Danial Sheibani is an Iranian-Canadian composer and the founder of Cuenion. His screen work has been featured on Amazon Prime Video and Tubi, alongside concert works performed with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and premiered at landmark venues including Koerner Hall, Winspear Centre, Harbourfront Centre, and the Yale School of Music.
Danial founded Cuenion to revolutionize media scoring by bringing the bold creative risk-taking, sonic versatility, and compositional rigor of contemporary classical music directly into film/TV, gaming, and commercials. Under his direction, Cuenion weaves high-art with evocative storytelling to create bold, unforgettable soundscapes for new stories.
A graduate of the University of Toronto, where he was awarded the Carolyn and Robert Lake Graduating Award, Sheibani studied composition primarily with Christos Hatzis and Gary Kulesha, Richard Danielpour, and David Serkin Ludwig. He has also worked under the mentorship of leading composers of the 21st century, including Ana Sokolović, Martin Bresnick, Donnacha Dennehy, Reza Vali, and Philippe Leroux, as well as conductor Joe Miller. Several works from his catalogue have been published by Modern Sound Collective, Alea Publishing, and distributed by the CBC.
The Blank Canvas Sound Collective before the inaugural concert.
Photography © 2023 Jingyi Zhou
More About me
He was a fellow at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music’s International Conducting Training Program where he conducted Sanctus and Benedictus from the Mozart Requiem with orchestra, chorus, and soloists. His mentors in the program were Joe Miller and L. Brett Scott. His conducting mentors include Thomas Burton (choral) and Gary Kulesha (orchestral) who have helped him grasp his technique and voice as a conductor. He is also an active vocalist, studying under Mark Daboll. Singing in many different choirs around Toronto has shown him a more human aspect in music which he hopes to present in works of his own. He has enrolled in summer studies at the Lake George Music Festival, Norfolk New Music Workshop, CCM Choral Intensive, Cascade Composers Workshop, Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, and Compocon 2023 – Standing Wave.
He has also studied film scoring with George Oldziey and Orchestration with Tim Huling from the film scoring department at Berklee College of Music and has also workshopped with film composers such as James Newton Howard, Harry Gregson-Williams, Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL), Christoph Beck, Christopher Lennertz, and Phillip Klein.