The Mozart of Madras

THE MOZART OF MADRAS

The Mozart of Madras is an indian composer named none other than our 2009 Oscarwinner A.R. Rahman which his full name is Allah Rakha Rahman.His original was A.S.Dileep Kumar and he had born on 6th January 1966.The title "the Mozart of Madras"  titled to him for his extensive body of work for film and stage. 

                                                              A.R.Rahman

                                                                

His successful career began with his father,R.K Sekhar who was a famous tamil musician who composed scores for the Malayalam film industry.Rahman began to study piano at age four.His interests in electronis and computers allowed him to pursue his passion and love to learn music.When he was nine years old,his father Sekhar passed away and by the the age of eleven he  started to play piano professionally in order to help and support his famil.This caused him to drop out of school.But by his professional experience in music,it led him to get a scholarship at Trinity College located at Oxford to study degree in Western classical music.

After succesfully getting a degree in Western Classical music,in 1988 his family decided to convert to Islam following a sister's recovery from a serious ilness which that was time he got the new name which is A.R.Rahman.He grew with playing in various bands and eventually his talents toward creating advertising jingles.He had wrote more than 300 jingles.In 1991,he received an award for his work on a coffee advertisment,while waiting to receive that award he had a chance to meet a famous Bollywood film director Mani Ratnam,who persuaded him to write music for motion pictures.His first project was for a tamil movie named ROJA(1992) which went as a great hit.

More than 100 movies followed after first film soundtrack hit.On 2001,he composed a music for the first Bollywood film titled LAGAAN which also came nominated for an academy award.Since that his music albums started to get even more popular which his music albums sold more than 100 million copies.

British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber heard some of Rahman’s soundtracks and asked the composer if he would be interested in writing a stage musical. Working with lyricist Don Black, Rahman composed the score for Bombay Dreams, a colourful satire of Bollywood films, and the show opened in London’s West End in 2002 without much fanfare. Rahman’s next stage project, a musical version of The Lord of the Rings, premiered in Toronto in 2006. Budgeted at $25 million, the production teamed Rahman with the Finnish folk ensemble Värttinä to compose a musical score that captured the otherworldliness of J.R.R. Tolkien’s creations. While the play met with harsh reviews in both Toronto and London it proved to be a moderate success with audiences.
Without giving up,he continued his work scoring films for Bollywood.He compoesed a song to the soundtrack of a movie named "Inside Man" in 2006 and following to a movie named "Elizabeth:The Golden Age" inn 2007.However in 2008, he came up with a album for the movie Slumdog Millionaire which captured the frenzied pace of life in Mumbai.This movie came dominated the awards circuit in 2009 which he collected a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for best music as well as a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for best score. Rahman’s streak continued at the Grammy Awards in 2010, where he collected the prize for best soundtrack and “Jai Ho”