He is an MBA graduate who left the corporate arena to pursue a passion.
And at 32, he has worked with leading composers and has rendered vocal support for one of the songs in Rajinikanth's upcoming “Rana”.
Vijay Sridharan, who recently completed a decade in the industry, says it is passion that keeps him going.
“My grandmother was an artist in AIR, and for a while, I took singing lessons from her. I used to play the veena too. I learnt Hindustani classical under V.M. Nagaraj and two others, and Carnatic under Kalladaikurichi Veena Venkatesh. By then, I began composing songs, and sent some of them to directors. And, that's when music director Dheena called me,” says Vijay.
Vijay worked as assistant composer with Dheena for films including “Thirupaachi”, “Thiruda Thirudi”, “Ayudam”. “When I sang in Dheena's studio, singers who worked for A.R. Rahman heard me, and introduced me to him. I then gave the back-vocal harmony for ‘Swades' . I was also a part of Ilaiyaraaja's ‘Tiruvasagam in Symphony'. And after this, I got calls from others such as Yuvan Shankar Raja too.”
He got his break with ‘Poga poga bhoomi' with Haricharan for “Pattiyal”. This was followed by the solo ‘Thothapuram' in “Varalaru” .
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After this, Vijay became a regular with back-vocal and support harmony in Rahman's music.
Having worked with the Oscar winner in “Anbe Aaruyire”, “Rang De Basanti”, “Endhiran”, “Raavan” and the latest “Rana”, Vijay has offers in Telugu too.
He has also composed tracks and sung a duet for “Aasai Padukiran” and a track in “Oru Sandhippil” .
Currently, Vijay is working on his own album — with nine tracks in Tamil, Hindi and Telugu.
