Magda Giannikou was born on January 27th, 1981 in Athens, Greece. At the age of five she began studying classical piano and music theory. She graduated at the age of 20 with a Certificate of Excellence from the National Conservatory of Greece. Parallel to her classical studies, she studied jazz piano and theory at the Nakas Jazz School in Athens.
At the age of 19 years old, she started working in Legend Recordings, the largest independent record label in Greece. She worked full-time in the Childrens’ department as in-house arranger/producer and she also did freelance work for Theatre and Television.
In September of 2003, she moved to Boston and enrolled in the Film Scoring program at Berklee College of Music. During her studies, she received various scholarships, among them the Georges Delerue Award for achievement in Film Scoring. She was also the 2007 recipient of the BMI Film Scoring Scholarship, presented by Doreen Ringer-Ross, vice president film/TV relations and film composer Thomas Newman. Though Film Scoring was her main objective, she got involved in many other areas of music such as big band writing, songwriting, concert music, production and engineering. She also performed as accordionist/vocalist with various music ensembles ranging from jazz, tango, brazilian, ethnic, to folk and greek traditional in Boston, NY and LA. Magda is currently living between NYC and Athens and working on various film projects. The debut album of her band, “Banda Magda” will be release soon.