BIOGRAPHY
Ilaiyaraaja, born Gnanathesigan, is an Indian composer, arranger, conductor and multi-instrumentalist whose career in Indian cinema, mostly Tamil but also Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi film, spans over 49 years. He has composed more than 5000 songs and scored close to 1000 films across nine languages, debuting in 1976 with Annakili, a soundtrack that introduced a new sound to Tamil film music. He was among the first Indian film composers to bring Western classical harmony and string arrangement into Indian film scoring, and in 1986 became the first Indian composer to record a film soundtrack using a computer. In 2025 he became the first Asian and first Indian film composer to compose, record and perform a full Western classical symphony live in London.