Céline Fankhauser is a composer, orchestrator and pianist based in Switzerland. She has been working as a freelance composer for several years and completed her bachelor’s and master’s degree at the Zurich University of the Arts. Céline specialises in music for film and dance as well as concert music for a wide variety of ensembles.

A central element of her artistic work is composing for movement, whether for moving images or dance. As an active gymnast, she has a keen understanding of physical forms of expression, which has a significant influence on her compositional work. This quality was particularly evident in her large-scale dance productions Die Schneekönigin and Himinglæva, as well as in the short film Alba, which made it to the semi-finals of the Student Academy Awards.

Her music is often precisely synchronised, composed in detail and closely linked to visual or choreographic sequences. This was evident, among other things, in the silent film concert Ciné Concert Alice Guy, which premiered in 2025 at the Cinémathèque française in Paris.

As an orchestrator she has worked for Tonhalle Zürich in collaborations with Mirko Loko and Ripperton. 

In addition to classical instrumental music, Céline Fankhauser is increasingly working with sound art. She often integrates sampled sounds and her own recordings into her compositions and combines them with live instruments. She developed this approach particularly in the context of film music, for example in the SRF documentary Zwei Sommer in der Badi (Two Summers at the Pool) and Roman Hill‘s video installation Inflow Outflow.

Céline loves to be inspired by characters and stories when composing. Adding another layer to the story and guiding emotions is a very responsible and challenging task that she loves to do.