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Nitin Sawhney CBE is a British composer, musician and producer who is widely regarded as one of the most inventive and prolific creatives of his generation.
His approach to composition is rooted in the idea of creating a distinct musical language for each project, drawing on a wide range of influences while remaining closely connected to story, character and emotion.
Sawhney has composed over sixty film scores, including Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, Breathe, Tiger, Orangutan, What’s Love Got to Do with It?, The Namesake and Midnight’s Children.
His TV credits include the MGM+ drama Vanished, the Sky Studios series Funny Woman, and the two epic BBC series Human Planet and Wonders of the Monsoon.
A recurring theme in his early film work was reinterpreting silent cinema in a contemporary context. He was commissioned to create new scores for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, Franz Osten’s A Throw of Dice and Mikio Naruse’s Yogoto no Yume, performing these live with orchestras.
As a multi-instrumentalist, he is renowned for his layered scores, which move effortlessly between classical composition, electronic soundscapes and multiple global music vocabularies, including Hindustani classical music, flamenco, jazz, hip-hop, drum and bass, rock and pop.
Sawhney has also scored extensively for theatre and dance, and his video game credits include Ninja Theory’s Heavenly Sword and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
For commercials, he has created music for global brands including Nike, Sephora and Yves Saint Laurent.
Sawhney first made his name as a musician and producer. His 11 acclaimed solo albums include the gold-selling Beyond Skin, which contains the anthemic track Homelands; London Undersound, which features Paul McCartney; Last Days of Meaning, which centres on a character played by the actor John Hurt; and the remarkable release One Zero, which was recorded live to vinyl.
Sawhney has collaborated with and written for P!nk, Sting, A.R. Rahman, Pink Floyd, Brian Eno, Sinéad O’Connor, Guy Garvey, Hak Baker, Lady Blackbird, Ellie Goulding, Anoushka Shankar, Norah Jones, Jeff Beck, Shakira, Will Young, Joss Stone, Taio Cruz, Horace Andy, Cirque du Soleil, Nelson Mandela, Ojos de Brujo, Hélène Grimaud, Natacha Atlas, Jools Holland, Jorja Smith, Gary Lineker, Lianne La Havas, Annie Lennox, Bob Geldof and Herbie Hancock.
In parallel with his work for screen and his own studio recordings, Sawhney is an established concert composer, writing ambitious orchestral and choral pieces that reflect his interest in identity, history and the human experience. He has written for and performed with ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and has conducted both the London Symphony Orchestra and the Singapore Festival Orchestra.
As a touring musician, Sawhney has performed extensively as an artist in his own right at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Royal Albert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and the Sydney Opera House.
Born to Indian parents and raised in Kent, England, he studied piano, classical and flamenco guitar, tabla and sitar from an early age, developing his instinct for combining different musical traditions.
Among his many international accolades, he received the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2019 New Year Honours List for services to music.
He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and BAFTA.
