Prominent Indian composer and music director Salil Bhayani credits his studies at Berklee College of Music in Boston for instilling in him a lifelong love for jazz. The 34 year-old Mumbai native who had graduated with honors from Berklee and then relocated to Los Angeles and is considered one of the most inspiring Indian composers in the post-A.R Rahman’s generation, has been acclaimed for skillfully adorning his compositions with the blues scale.
Prominent Indian composer and music director Salil Bhayani credits his studies at Berklee College of Music in Boston for instilling in him a lifelong love for jazz. The 34 year-old Mumbai native who had graduated with honors from Berklee and then relocated to Los Angeles and is considered one of the most inspiring Indian composers in the post-A.R Rahman’s generation, has been acclaimed for skillfully adorning his compositions with the blues scale.
One of the leading composers at illustrious TED-Ed platform, Bhayani was recently tasked to compose a detective theme for Agatha Christie’s most notable detective duo, Mr. Poirot and Miss Marple, as part of TED-Ed’s video production The secret formula to Agatha Christie's murder mysteries. Bhayani leaned upon the reliable blues, a walking bass line, and the good ol’ swing rhythm for the peppiness. The rich texture of the harmonies in the theme was carried by strings, while the playful Pink Panther-esque melodic motif was beautifully performed by a muted trumpet, and complemented the popular video that has accumulated close to 400K views and counting. Bhayani is busy composing for a series of TED-Ed’s new and highly anticipated videos which includes a story about a 13th-century mystic and one of history’s most popular and mysterious poet Rumi.
Described as the king of stylistically precise fusion, Bhayani is able to tell compelling stories through the emotive quality of music, which he believes comes through a delicate balance of craft, skill, and intuition. A successful audio books and video games composer, Bhayani teamed up with Dhruv Jani and Sushant Chakraborty, the visionaries at award-winning Studio Oleomingus, and together they started working on the history-themed video games set in re- imagined Colonial India, that have since been acclaimed internationally for their uncommon visual and sound beauty. Bhayani, who is the lead composer for all Studio Oleomingus games, creates haunting harmonies and beautiful melodies, nervous rhythms and eerie chorals that bring to life the Studio Oleomingus surreal stories making video games sites of powerful democratic discourse, and an anti-Colonial archive for places of entangled heritage.
The striking visuals and Bhayani’s bewitching score composed by him with mature audience in mind, attracted international audiences and brought the Studio Oleomingus games to interactive art exhibitions around the world, from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to the Notes in the Margins of History exhibition at the Videogame Art Gallery in Chicago and The Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
For Bhayani, who is The 2019 Dreamachine International Film Festival Best Score award winner and Top Indie Film Awards nominee, the unresolved questions of one’s individual and collective past are unquestionably linked to broader issues of national and racial identities – the central themes of his another immensely successful in the US project, a short film The Color of Me. Directed by an Indian- American director Sreejith Nair, this award- winning movie and an official selection at the Amazon Prime Studios first All Voice Film Festival, tells a story of an adopted African American boy who falls in love with a girl with an unusual condition which changes her skin color into 5 different races. Bhayani’s score beautifully sifts through the storylines of the racial characters, and unifies their inner and outer struggles with their own race.
Bhayani’s thematic and serene fusion music scores add additional depths to all films he works on contributing to their successes which is evident by Bhayani winning the Best Score Award at the 2021 Hollywood Blood Horror Festival for psychological thriller Landfill starring Academy Award nominated actress Linda Blair.
Bhayani’s next project is composing a new score for a play written by Cooper Bates, an award winning playwright and actor, whose play Black When I was a Boy won multiple awards, including The Hollywood Encore Producer Award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Bhayani is creating an evocative soundscapes for eagerly awaited Black When I was a Boy – Blacked Out Part II.
Bhayani will be using jazz influences along with dramatic elements added from Hollywood’s Golden era, to give the play a cinematic feel. Bhayani will be experimenting with electronic synths, and creating sounds with vintage synths such as the Moog and Korg. This experimentation is expected to create unique drama for the performances of this play making it an immersive experience.
~Shraddha Thanawala
One of the leading composers at illustrious TED-Ed platform, Bhayani was recently tasked to compose a detective theme for Agatha Christie’s most notable detective duo, Mr. Poirot and Miss Marple, as part of TED-Ed’s video production The secret formula to Agatha Christie's murder mysteries. Bhayani leaned upon the reliable blues, a walking bass line, and the good ol’ swing rhythm for the peppiness. The rich texture of the harmonies in the theme was carried by strings, while the playful Pink Panther-esque melodic motif was beautifully performed by a muted trumpet, and complemented the popular video that has accumulated close to 400K views and counting. Bhayani is busy composing for a series of TED-Ed’s new and highly anticipated videos which includes a story about a 13th-century mystic and one of history’s most popular and mysterious poet Rumi.
Described as the king of stylistically precise fusion, Bhayani is able to tell compelling stories through the emotive quality of music, which he believes comes through a delicate balance of craft, skill, and intuition. A successful audio books and video games composer, Bhayani teamed up with Dhruv Jani and Sushant Chakraborty, the visionaries at award-winning Studio Oleomingus, and together they started working on the history-themed video games set in re- imagined Colonial India, that have since been acclaimed internationally for their uncommon visual and sound beauty. Bhayani, who is the lead composer for all Studio Oleomingus games, creates haunting harmonies and beautiful melodies, nervous rhythms and eerie chorals that bring to life the Studio Oleomingus surreal stories making video games sites of powerful democratic discourse, and an anti-Colonial archive for places of entangled heritage.
The striking visuals and Bhayani’s bewitching score composed by him with mature audience in mind, attracted international audiences and brought the Studio Oleomingus games to interactive art exhibitions around the world, from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to the Notes in the Margins of History exhibition at the Videogame Art Gallery in Chicago and The Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
For Bhayani, who is The 2019 Dreamachine International Film Festival Best Score award winner and Top Indie Film Awards nominee, the unresolved questions of one’s individual and collective past are unquestionably linked to broader issues of national and racial identities – the central themes of his another immensely successful in the US project, a short film The Color of Me. Directed by an Indian- American director Sreejith Nair, this award- winning movie and an official selection at the Amazon Prime Studios first All Voice Film Festival, tells a story of an adopted African American boy who falls in love with a girl with an unusual condition which changes her skin color into 5 different races. Bhayani’s score beautifully sifts through the storylines of the racial characters, and unifies their inner and outer struggles with their own race.
Bhayani’s thematic and serene fusion music scores add additional depths to all films he works on contributing to their successes which is evident by Bhayani winning the Best Score Award at the 2021 Hollywood Blood Horror Festival for psychological thriller Landfill starring Academy Award nominated actress Linda Blair.
Bhayani’s next project is composing a new score for a play written by Cooper Bates, an award winning playwright and actor, whose play Black When I was a Boy won multiple awards, including The Hollywood Encore Producer Award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Bhayani is creating an evocative soundscapes for eagerly awaited Black When I was a Boy – Blacked Out Part II.
Bhayani will be using jazz influences along with dramatic elements added from Hollywood’s Golden era, to give the play a cinematic feel. Bhayani will be experimenting with electronic synths, and creating sounds with vintage synths such as the Moog and Korg. This experimentation is expected to create unique drama for the performances of this play making it an immersive experience.
~Shraddha Thanawala
For more information contact All About Jazz.
