Hello, and thank you for visiting my page!

My name is Anastasia, and I’m a composer and writer from Russia and the Netherlands, now based in LA.

My grandad was an actor, TV director, and professor of cinematography, and ever since I can remember myself, I was playing with his books on film theory. My first musical dream was to become a musical theater composer, which led me to delve into drama and lyric writing studies. Between the ages of 15 and 16, I wrote four musicals.

I switched to pop music and had a record deal as a songwriter, with some of my songs performed on more than 120 radio stations across Russia and Ukraine. In addition, I took private lessons in 20th-century composition techniques with a former student of Rodion Shchedrin, a prominent Soviet and Russian composer of the last century.

I eventually gravitated toward film music, as it naturally combined all my areas of interest. Besides USC, I studied screen scoring at Berklee Online and was honored with Mark Mothersbaugh Celebrity Scholarship. I trained in music production and sound engineering at Abbey Roads Institute and completed an electronic music production program at Pyntago school in Amsterdam.

Today, I have hands-on experience building and leading music production teams — coordinating additional composers, managing remote recording sessions, and overseeing the full cycle of score delivery, all while maintaining a cohesive musical voice across the project.

Outside of music, I studied screenwriting professionally in film schools in both Russia and the US. I also took multiple genre courses and the Anatomy of Story masterclass with renowned story expert John Truby, and participated in workshops led by Robert McKee, Linda Seger, and Neil Landau. I believe this has helped me develop a strong sense of narrative, character, and pacing, and has deepened my understanding of how music supports storytelling.

My latest projects include the feature films Perpetual Perfection (2025), a psychological drama about an aspiring ballet dancer, and a surrealistic horror Inside a Spider (2024). For the latter, I was a finalist in the categories of Best Sound Design in an Experimental Feature and Best Soundtrack in an Experimental Feature at the Experimental Film Brazil Festival.

You can contact me by e-mail: listopad at usc.edu