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On the beat

Sense and substance Abhishek Ray: ‘I told the directors that I would compose and arrange the songs myself’

At 29, Abhishek Ray managed to convince poet-lyricist Gulzar to do “Udas Paani”, his debut album (2006) “without a single change”, as he recalls. The album, a mix of poetry and music, was a hit. This Delhi-based music composer , vocalist and conservationist who has to his credit over 500 television serials apart from ads, travel shows and documentaries, has completed three films as a solo music director.

Earlier he had scored the background music and one song (“Sun Re Kajri”) for Tigmanshu Dhulia’s “Haasil”. Dhulia has repeated him in his forthcoming film “Shagird” releasing shortly. “It has one song ‘Kaisi Talab’ sung by Kunal Ganjawala, and the rest is background music as the film is score-driven,” he says.

His second film, “Tum Se Milkar” directed by K.S. Adhyanan, has seven songs penned by Gulzar and sung by Shreya Ghoshal, Alka Yagnik, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Hariharan, Udit Narayan and Abhishek himself. And in his third film, Jagmohan Mundra’s “Shoot On Sight”, on terrorism, which stars Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri, Abhishek has composed the title track of the film. “Mundra had heard my ‘Incredible India’ track which has a lot of South Indian musical instruments and alaps, apart form the track of the ‘Symphony of Taj’ which has Arabic sounds. So, he asked me to compose a sort of mix of both which he thought a foreigner wouldn’t be able to do.”

The significant point is that he has both composed and arranged the songs. He shares, “Usually music directors make the tunes and leave it to the arrangers to decorate them. For me, it’s like making an art work and leaving the choice of colours to others. Before taking up these films, I told the directors that I would compose and arrange the songs myself.”

For Abhishek music and academics ran parallel. He started composing music from his school days. His mother holds a Sangeet Visharad degree and his father used to play the violin. “I trained in classical and Western music. I started composing jingles for television in class XI. By the time I completed my post graduation (MCA), I was earning equal to a computer engineer,” recalls Abhishek. Abhishek has a studio in South Delhi. “I constructed it slowly with the money I got through my jingles,” he smiles with pride.

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