Anissa Ibrahim (b. 2005) is a composer-violist from Georgia based in Nashville, Tennessee. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Musical Arts in Music Composition and Culture, Advocacy, and Leadership at Vanderbilt University.
As a composer, Anissa’s music brings together rhythmic and modal influences from her Sierra Leonean heritage with late Romantic and 20th century harmonic practices. Her work frequently explores immigrant identity and experience, the complex manifestations of grief, and narratives that bring together the individual and the collective. In 2024, she was a composition fellow at the Nief Norf Summer Festival, where she studied with Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Chelsea Loew; her work moment of respite was premiered at the festival’s closing. At Vanderbilt, she studies with Drs Michael Slayton, Stan Link, Michael Alec Rose, and Molly Herron.
Devoted to the intersection of composition and performance, Anissa is a dedicated violist performing solo, chamber, and orchestral works. She currently studies with Daniel Reinker, is a member of the Vanderbilt University Orchestra under the baton of Ernesto Estigarribia Mussi, and was conducted by Grant Cooper, José-Luis Novo, and Gerard Schwarz in the Young Artists Orchestra at the 2024 Eastern Music Festival, where she was the recipient of a Young Artists Merit Scholarship and studied with Diane Phoenix-Neal.
A passionate believer in equitable music education access, Anissa has taught at the W. O. Smith Community Music School and is an Undergraduate Scholar of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. Her career goals are oriented towards the intersection of composition and arts administration, leveraging the power of the arts to create a more vibrant and just society for all.
Anissa Ibrahim 