Vanessa Donelly

Film Composer
Songwriter

Vanessa Donelly

Vanessa Donelly is a German film composer & songwriter known for the film THE ANGEL IN THE WALL.

Vanessa studied piano and conducting at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media and was fortunate to meet film composer Randall Meyers (SOPHIE'S WORLD) in Munich and learn from him for several years.
After attending many international master classes with renowned composers like Alexandre Desplat (GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL), James Newton Howard (THE DARK KNIGHT) and Danny Elfman (ALICE IN WONDERLAND), Vanessa started composing her first films for DOP Peter Zeitlinger (QUEEN OF THE DESERT) and director Silvia Zeitlinger. Today Vanessa is fortunate enough to call them her friends.
In 2017 Vanessa started her own recording studio "Donelly Records" and became a member of "Books, Music and Lyrics" London in 2020, where she started writing music at London's West End. Beginning in 2023 she began composing filmmusic for ARD.
Along side film music and musical composition Vanessa is passionate about her satiric cabaret group "passivattraktiv", consisting of lyricist Rune Baruschke and singers Lisa Hintzke and Rafael Albert. The group has performed many shows including at the Schmidtchen (Hamburg) and the Schlot in Berlin. After being voted Act of the Month at the Wabe Berlin in April 2023 passivattraktiv continued to the finale in December 2023 where they won the title Act of the Year and will perform their program "Something with Culture" (orig. Irgendwas mit Kultur) in October 2024 in the Wabe Berlin.

Recently Vanessa Donelly won the Vespertilio Award at Ore d'Orrore in the category "Best Filmmusic" in Rome (Italy), the Heimspielpreis at the Braunschweig International Filmfestival, and was interviewed by Bita Schafi-Neya for NDR2 and NDR Kultur and Cornelia Bittmann for the culture magazine "Mosaik" for WDR.