"It would be easier to jot down what this man can’t do than what he can." -The Guardian, London, England
There is no disputing the fact that Nitin Sawhney is widely regarded as one of the most influential and versatile creative talents alive today. Firmly established as a world-class producer, songwriter, DJ, multi-instrumentalist, orchestral composer, and cultural pioneer, Sawhney has become a latter-day Renaissance man in the worlds of music, film, videogames, dance and theatre.
Sawhney has released 8 studio albums - each one garnering critical acclaim. Indeed, Sawhney has received no less than 17 major national awards for his work. London’s Outcaste Records released the breakthrough Gold selling Beyond Skin in ’99, which took a prestigious Technics Mercury Music Prize nomination and won Sawhney the coveted South Bank Show Award. Subsequently, Sawhney signed a multiple album deal to Richard Branson’s V2 Records, and released the millennial epic and Gold certified Prophesy in 2001, winning a MOBO Award as well as a BBC Radio
3 Music Award. Sawhney’s seventh studio album, Philtre, was released in May 2005, winning another BBC Radio 3 Award and has recently released his
eighth album, London Undersound, which features performances from Paul McCartney, Anoushka Shankar, Natty and Imogen Heap amongst others and specially contributed artwork from Antony Gormley. Clubland has seen three international album releases by Sawhney: All Mixed Up – the definitive remix collection, FabricLive.15, and In the Mind of….Nitin Sawhney. He has toured each of his albums extensively and has sold-out many of the world’s most prestigious venues with leading orchestras, his own band and as a DJ. Sawhney has worked with a host of artists including Sting, Paul McCartney, Sinead O’Connor, A R Rahman, Jeff Beck, Brian Eno, Fink, and Will Young. In 2007 Sawhney co-produced the sophomore album for Atlantic Records artist Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly.
To date, Sawhney has scored over forty films, as well as having scored TV ads for top international agencies. His music for Channel Four’s Second Generation saw him nominated for the prestigious Ivor Novello Award for Film and TV Composition (2004), and his scores have accompanied everything from dark, high-tension drama to light-hearted animatronics. Known for his incredible degree of versatility Sawhney has established himself as one of the world’s leading composers for film, and has acted as a judge for BAFTA, BIFA and The Ivor Novello Awards. Recent works include orchestral scores for Mira Nair’s The Namesake, Sony Playstation 3’s Heavenly Sword, and Franz Osten’s silent film classic, A Throw of Dice, which he wrote for the London Symphony Orchestra. In production, amidst touring with his band and orchestras around the world, Sawhney will be scoring Deepa Mehta’s forthcoming Exclusion, Henrique Goldman’s Brazuka (recently completed), on the life of Jean-Charles de Menezes, The Fifth Beatle, on the life of Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, and the directorial debut of legendary actor Andy Serkis, Dark Blue Rising. He is also currently composing the score for Ninja Theory’s follow up game development to Heavenly Sword tba, as well as the score to a rare Japanese silent movie from 1933 for the LSO.
An acclaimed flamenco guitarist and classical/jazz pianist, Sawhney’s musical ability to transcend cultural barriers has also gained him much recognition within the classical community. In 2006 Sawhney composed the 1hr 20-minute symphony to accompany A Throw of Dice, which premiered with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, London and has subsequently toured globally with international orchestras. He has also worked with the BBC Concert Orchestra on Natural World Symphony, and the London Philharmonia on The Namesake. In 2004, Sawhney was commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Britten Sinfonia to compose several new performance works. Other past commissions include 2000’s Urban Prophecies for BBC Proms, 2001’s Neural Circuits for the Britten Sinfonia and leading British pianist, Joanna, and a commissioned concert for 2006 Electric Proms. 2007’s BBC Proms featured a retrospective of Nitin Sawhney’s works by way of a sold-out groundbreaking orchestral performance at the Royal Albert Hall and was followed last year by an Electric Proms full orchestral commission consolidating Sawhney as the only artist to have performed at and sold out both the traditional and pop-orientated BBC Proms in his own right. Sawhney is currently in talks with the LSO to collaborate on the season of Summer/Autumn 2009.
In 2000 Sawhney produced the Varekai album for Cirque du Soleil, taking his unique sound to an even-wider audience. In 2002 he worked with Akram Khan and Anish Kapoor, scoring the music to Khan’s critically acclaimed choreographed work Kaash, and also wrote the music for Khan’s Zero Degrees (nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award, and designed by Antony Gormley). Sawhney has recently been presented with a “Bessie” in New York City for his work on Zero Degrees. Sawhney also scored Khan’s latest work, bahok, a collaboration with the National Ballet of China and is due to present a two-week celebration of Indian music and dance at Sadlers Wells, Svapnagata , to be co-curated between Sawhney and Khan. Recent works in theatre include Simon McBurney’s Olivier award-winning A Disappearing Number for Complicite, the Mahabharata adaptation by Olivier award-winning writer Stephen Clarke and Jonathan Holmes’ Fallujah.
Much of Sawhney’s attention remains focused on the areas of education and community building, accepting the role of Artist in Residence for no less than 5 separate performing arts organisations around the world. Sawhney joined Sir George Martin as a patron for the British Government’s Access-to-Music program and is also patron of the Raindance East Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards. Sawhney appears regularly as an arts and current affairs commentator on topical discussion and news programs such as the BBC’s Newsnight, Newsnight Review, and HardTalk. He has also written for UK national broadsheets: The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and The Observer. In 2006 Sawhney was awarded an Honorary Graduate Degree from London’s South Bank University and in late 2007 was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Kent. In 2008 Sawhney was made a fellow of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and this year he receives three more Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Sussex, Staffordshire and Roehampton.
For further information, please contact tina@positiv-id.co.uk.