Nomi Abadi is a virtuoso pianist, singer, composer, activist, and inventor of the NORY® double keytar. A piano prodigy, she started piano lessons at age three, began composing music at four years old, and made her orchestral debut with the Orange County County Chamber Orchestra at age five playing a Mozart Concerto. She has toured and performed as a solo artist and guest pianist with various orchestras worldwide, most notably as the pianist of String Theory, earning the group a Grammy nomination in 2020 with their album, “Sekou Andrew and the String Theory”. Nomi has completed national and international world tours, most notably in Budapest, Prague, and Angola.

An American-born Jewish Syrian-Egyptian, Nomi was born into four generations of piano teachers. Her grandmother was Tom Waits’s piano teacher, and taught Nomi’s father, a classical and ragtime pianist. Nomi received her piano training from her mother and father, and at age eight, moved to New York to attend The New School (formerly the Mannes School of Music), becoming one of their youngest students ever. She discovered a passion for acting as a child, attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and studied in master classes throughout Los Angeles such as Berg Studios with Gregory Berger-Sobek, the private coach of Lupita Nyong’o and former Yale School of Drama faculty. Nomi has acted in stage productions and indie films, and appeared in Proximity (Apple TV) and in Oz, the Great and Powerful.

As a singer, Nomi has collaborated with composers and songwriters like Keir Schmidt (Son Lux, Kimbra) and Roger Neill (King of the Hill), and as the singer of Australian composer Jacquie Joy’s EDM track, “You’ll Feel Nothing”. Through composing, Nomi has earned over twenty film and video games credits, scoring for indie films and brands such as Apple, BOSE, Cartoon Network and NASA. She won the Outstanding Achievement Award in the Independent Shorts Fest for her score for “The Unnatural Order” in 2022 and will make her concert music debut with her Quartet for NORY® in E Minor in summer 2023 at the Puerto Rico Game Sound Convention.

In 2020, Nomi founded the Female Composer Safety League, a 501(c)(3) whose mission focuses on the safety and empowerment of women composers. She was the first person to testify in front of the Judiciary Committee in Sacramento in support of AB-2777, a California legislation in progress which calls for the removal of the statue to limitations of sexual assault.

After NORY®’s patent was granted in 2018, the double keytar garnered the attention of keyboardists across the music industry. NORY® was a finalist in the Georgia Tech’s Guthman Musical Instrument Competition in 2020, making its TV debut on the Emmy-nominated show, “The Afterparty”, in 2022. Nomi is one of the only known solo women in the world to hold a keyboard instrument patent.

Along with composing, piano, singing, acting and activism, Nomi also wrote, directed, scored, produced and starred in “Roadkill”, a short film, earning her the Best Dark Comedy and Best Acting Duo awards at the Independent Shorts Festival in 2021.

Film Scoring Hollywood Misconduct Abuse & Harassment

#MeToo Missed Us: Female Composers Speak Out

Sexual Assault Survivors Call Out Music Industry Ahead of Grammys