Dr. Sanya Shoilevska Henderson is a Macedonian-American composer, pianist, and musicologist based in Los Angeles. For as long as she can remember, music has been the most natural way for her to express herself and communicate with the outside world. Likewise, she considers music a sanctuary where she can focus and look inwards to fully immerse herself in exploring the inner musical universe from different angles as a creator, performer, and a scholar. 

For Sanya music is a lifelong journey of discovery and study. Born in Skopje, North Macedonia, she was raised with a strong academic background. She started her formal music education at the age of seven studying piano, solfège and music theory.  At the age of fourteen Sanya decided to pursue her career as a musician and continued her high school education at the performing arts school - Music and Ballet School Center “Ilija Nikolovski Luj” in Skopje. During this formative years she performed many concerts and solo recitals, played as a soloist with the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra, and won awards and acknowledgments at the regional and national piano competitions.

She completed her undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Music Arts in Skopje where she double majored in piano performance and musicology (1987). Sanya continued her graduates studies in musicology at the same school and obtained her master's degree in 1991. In 1988-1989 she completed the master’s program in piano at the prestigious École Normale de Musique “Alfred Cortot” in Paris, France as a recipient of the renowned French Government Scholarship.

After the return from France, from 1989 to 1994, Sanya worked as an assistant professor at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia where she taught musicology, history of music, and music in film and theater. In 1993 she came to Los Angeles to pursue her doctoral research in film music which she successfully completed in 2000, earning her Ph.D. degree in musicology at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. 

In the early stages of her career, she performed as a solo pianist and chamber musician, and contributed as a scholar research to various fields of research. She began her career as a composer in the early 1990s by writing music for theater. After moving to Los Angeles in 1993, she continued to compose for theater and collaborated with several companies, notably Ray Bradbury's Pandemonium Theatre Company. In the 2000's she continued her studies of composition for film and media, and orchestral conducting at the UCLA Extension, and ventured into film scoring. Her music is engaging, sensual, witty, versatile, with fascinating ambiences and moods that often influenced by her musical heritage from the Balkans. Sanya is the author of the book Alex North, Film Composer.

She is a member of the Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL) , Alliance of Women Film Composers (AWFC), and the Music Teachers Association of California (MTAC).