Wani Ismail was born and raised in Malaysia. She started learning the violin at the age of 9 and gained her first orchestral experience a year later in a local youth music camp programme. Since then, she has always been interested in orchestral playing, but it was at the age of 16, when she got her first experience to play side-by-side with National Symphony Orchestra Malaysia that she decided to pursue music as a career. Wani enrolled in a local university, Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) for her Diploma in Music and graduated with Vice Chancellor Award for her excellence in academic results. She then enrolled to another local university, University-College Sedaya International (UCSI) for her Bachelor Degree in Classical Music and graduated with Upper Second Class Honors. Most recently in September 2015, she started studying in Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD), Cardiff, to further her music education for Postgraduate programme where she is currently undertaking Masters Degree in Music Performance. Throughout Wani’s musical journey, she has performed all around Malaysia, as well as around the Southeast Asia region. She was a member of the National Youth Symphony Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, as well as ASEAN-Russia Symphony Orchestra where the orchestra performed in Indonesia, Cambodia, Brunei and Myanmar between 2011 to 2014. She was also a freelance musician in Kuala Lumpur, where she was hired to play in orchestra for local and international artists performing around Malaysia, as well as Singapore. Aside from orchestral performance, Wani was also part of a string quartet group called Strings Attached Quartet based in Kuala Lumpur. The quartet performed mostly for events such as weddings and gatherings and Wani arranged most of the pop music into arrangements for string quartet. Wani has taken violin masterclasses with Dene Olding and Kirsty Hilton, from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Evgeny Zvonnikov from the Orfeo Trio, and Bogdan Bozovic from the Vienna Piano Trio. She has also taken chamber music masterclasses with Catherine Manson of the London Haydn Quartet, Elise Kuder of the Apple Hill String Quartet, Prof. Dr. James Miltenberger, and Lillian Green, from the United States. Other than violin playing, Wani also studied composition during her studies in UCSI, which helped her to make music arrangements for various instrument combination. She usually composes during her spare time. In 2014, she joined the ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop in New York to understand the industry for film music, which is also one of her passions.
