Ilaiyaraja - 1000th film

A musical journey that began in 1976 with ‘Annakili’ is all set to reach a milestone, 38 years later. Music director Ilaiyaraja will soon be composing music for his 1,000th film, ‘Thaara Thappattai’. The film’s director Bala revealed this recently.

About Ilaiyaraja: Ilaiyaraja (born Gnanadesikan) is an Indian film composer who works in the Indian film Industry. His body of work has spanned across Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Hindi and English language films. Regarded as one of the finest music composers in India, Ilaiyaraja is also an instrumentalist, singer, and a songwriter. To date, he has composed over 4500 songs and provided film scores for more than 950 Indian films in various languages, particularly being acclaimed for his background scoring. His songs and background score played a very crucial role in the success of many films. Ilaiyaraja has been a prominent composer of film music in the South Indian cinema since the late 1970s. His works are mainly in Tamil, but has also scored music for numerous films in Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi. Of late, he also composed for two Marathi films. He integrated folk—in Tamil—and introduced western musical sensibilities into the South Indian musical mainstream.

A gold medalist in classical guitar from Trinity College of Music, London, in 1993, he organised a full symphony and thus became the first Asian to compose a full symphony performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London's Walthamstow Town Hall, which is yet to be released. In 2003, according to an international poll conducted by BBC, people from 155 countries voted his composition “Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu” from the 1991 film Thalapathi as fourth in the world's top 10 most popular songs of all time. He was also nominated in the Best Indian album Music Awards category at US based Just Plain Folks Music Organization, which is the largest grassroots music organization in the world, and stood third for his "Music Journey: Live in Italy".

In the 2000s, he composed a variety of non-film music, including religious and devotional songs, an oratorio, and world music, while shifting his focus to Malayalam and Kannada films. He is usually referred to by the title Isaignani (English: Musical Genius), or as The Maestro. As of 2013, he has won four Indian National Film Awards; three for Best Music Direction and one for Best Background Score and is a recipient of Padma Bhushan, awarded by the Government of India. Ilaiyaraja also received the NTR National Award in 2004. In 2012 he received the Sangeet Natak Academi Award for his creative and experimental works in music field. Popular world cinema portal Taste of Cinema placed Ilaiyaraja at the 9th position in its list of 25 greatest film composers in the cinema history. In a poll conducted by CNN-IBN celebrating 100 years of Indian cinema in 2013, Ilaiyaraja was voted the greatest music composer of India with a maximum of 49%.

Ilaiyaraja has composed music for events such as the 1996 Miss World beauty pageant that was held in Bangalore, India, and for a documentary called India 24 Hours (1996). He was conferred the title Isaignani  in 1988 by the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Mr. M. Karunanidhi.