MUSIC MATES

Posts Tagged ‘Ilaiyaraaja’

Ilayaraja a great musician come singer from India composed more than 840 albums in film industry throughout his career of more than 25 years. He is famously known as ‘Isaingyani’ which means a musical genius in Tamil Film Industry. Ilayaraja was born on June 2, 1943 in a rural family in Panniapuram near Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. As he was from a rural family he didn’t have good education but after recognition in Tamil film industry he did a course in Classical Guitar in Trinity College of Music, London. Ilayaraja got a gold medal in his course.

Ilayaraja‘s first movie was “Annakkili” in that he fused Tamil Folk Music and Tamil Film Music and he was the first to do that attempt and got succeeded. The National Best Film Music Composer award was bagged by him for three times and bagged many awards in regional level. Also he is the first Asian to compose a full symphony. He composed this to Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO). After his Symphony he was known to everybody in TamilNadu as Maestro Ilayaraja. His music was of great uniqueness as he blended Western and Indian instruments.

In his symphony for Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), he composed Thiruvasagam, which is an old Tamil Literature. He did this symphony mainly to attract younger generations to India’s spiritual traditions. This was released on June 30, 2005 in a grand manner at the Music Academy in Chennai. The CD of this Symphony by Ilayaraja was also released in US in the Tamizhar Thiruvizha.

Ilayaraja composed this symphony with a high-profile team of musicians and sound engineers and they are Budapest Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Laszlo kovacs and Oscar winning Lyricist Stephen Schwartz along with five time Grammy-award winner for sound engineer, Richard King.
Ilayaraja is still composing music for Tamil films and he also composed many albums other than that of film albums which was also very popular among his fans.