Valeri Ortiz is a Filipina-American composer and pianist from Livonia, Michigan, now based in Los Angeles. Her work spans television, animation, branded content, and film including The Garage, which received an Honorable Mention at The Russo Brothers’ AGBO No Sleep ’Til Film Fest; Intel®’s global launch campaign for the Intel® CoreTM i9 Processor; and SKRRRT!— a Rideback Rise-supported short produced in partnership with Netflix and Cate Blanchett’s Dirty Films. She also composed the scores for the contemplative documentary short Candid, and Fil- Am which premiered at the 2026 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Most recently, Valeri scored Paper Daughter, the first-ever animated short supported by CAPE and the Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge Grant. Her original music can also be heard on HBO Max’s Julia, the BAFTA and WGA-nominated series about the life of Julia Child, Netflix’s Churchill at War, the streaming hit The Hunting Wives, and the Netflix western The Abandons.
Valeri’s music has been placed in the long-running TV show Bondi Rescue, Foxtel’s The Great Australian Bake Off hosted by comedian Natalie Tran (also known as communitychannel on YouTube), ABC series’ Muster Dogs, Inside The Sydney Opera House, and The Family Court Murders, and numerous Channel Seven Network shows. She was chosen as a finalist in the inaugural Press Start Orchestra Composer Competition, and her entry for the Rec Change Game Audio Competition received an honorable mention.
While attending Berklee College of Music for the Composition for Film, TV, and Games diploma, Valeri was selected to be part of the Women in Animation mentorship circle led by former AWFC president Catherine Joy (Minari, RBG). She was also chosen to participate in a workshop under the direction of Rob Teehan (Elementary, Jessica Jones, Homeland).
Valeri’s revere for music was evident from a young age; she would spend her days plucking out songs that she heard on the TV or radio on her toy keyboard. She was promptly enrolled in piano lessons, and as a result, learned to read sheet music before she learned the entire alphabet (this later caused a meltdown at preschool when she was informed that there were letters beyond A through G). That said, her love for film scoring was realized in the 2015 Orlando 48 Hour Film Project where the film she wrote music for, Wake Up, directed by Joshua Ortiz, went on to be selected for a special screening at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. She was awarded in the two subsequent Orlando 48-Hour Film Projects, and she has since been devoted to the craft of creating scores that serve to immerse the viewer in the world of the beheld media.
Outside of composing and playing piano, Valeri enjoys spending time with her geriatric parrot, climbing, and [light] hiking with her two retired racing greyhounds and her not-yet-retired director husband, Joshua Ortiz.
With the barracks set from Paper Daughter
