Amit Trivedi

Early life

Trivedi was born in Bandra, Mumbai in India. His native city is Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Career

In his younger days, an electronic musical instrument fascinated Trivedi and he was slowly drawn towards music, mainly influenced by classical music. At 19–20, he began composing music. In college days joined the band Om, who performed at local gigs, small shows and live performances. They struck gold when Times Music took notice at one of their shows, and offered to launch their album. The album however did not fare well, due to lack of promotion. Eventually Trivedi went on to compose for theatre (Hindi, English and Gujarati plays), background music for television shows, live performances, dandiya shows, orchestras etc. He also had a brief stint composing advertisement jingles, for brands such as McDonald's and Airtel. After sound engineer and Audio Garage Recording Studio owner Arvind Vishwakarma introduced Trivedi to Sony BMG, he began composing music for non-film albums. As a part of his two-year contract, Trivedi composed some tracks for Abhijeet Sawant's Junoon and one song in Prashant Tamang's debut album.He arranged for many musician including Amartya Rahut for a marathi movie Uttarayan in 2004.

Film music eventually came his way, when friend and playback singer Shilpa Rao suggested his name to film director Anurag Kashyap. The latter was in search of a new composer with a distinct vision for his next film. After meeting Trivedi, Kashyap offered him the chance to compose the soundtrack to Dev.D. Although it was scheduled to be his debut, Dev.D ran into production delays and was shelved for some time. Dev.D's music got critical acclaimation

Upon Kashyap's recommendation, Trivedi was roped in to score Raj Kumar Gupta's directorial venture Aamir. Trivedi and Gupta worked on making the soundtrack fuse with the film narrative, resulting in an effort that garnered critical recognition.

By the end of 2008, Dev.D was finally released. The soundtrack, released in December, consisted of 18 tracks of different genres. Trivedi dubbed the soundtrack the "baap (father) of different genres". He sang five songs on the soundtrack, and wrote the lyrics for one ("Aankh Micholi"). He shot to fame with the unusual music of Dev.D, giving many chart-busters like "Emosanal Attyachar", "Saali Khushi", "O Pardesi" and many more. He was conferred with both the R. D. Burman Award and the Best Background Score at the Filmfare Awards 2010, before receiving the National Film Award for Best Music Direction, the highest recognition for Indian composers. Trivedi wrote the score for the 2009 Hindi Film, Wake Up Sid and one of his compositions "Iktaara" was also included in the soundtrack. In 2009 itself, Trivedi was roped in by Anshu Sharma to compose the team anthem "Game for More" for Royal Challengers Bangalore, a team owned by liquor baron Vijay Mallya. Between scoring for films, Trivedi also wrote the title track for the reality show Big Switch aired on UTV Bindaas.

Music characteristics

Music provided by Amit Trivedi has always been different in tone & perspective. He has often collaborated with lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya who is known for his profound control of Hindi and Urdu as well as various folk languages. He often sings various of his compositions and is known for his distinct edgy/rustic voice. In one of his interviews, he stated that he never received formal training in singing and sings what sounds good to him. Trivedi's music has a refined sense of instrumentation and follows a more varied range of orchestrated music. He often experiments with his music style changing aspects of the musical tune simultaneously in order to establish a different phase of soundtrack genre.

Movie music composer (songs) / background score

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Live performance

Amit Trivedi did his first live concert at Mood Indigo (IIT Bombay's annual cultural festival), on 23 December 2010. The concert also witnessed Tochi Raina, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Kavita Seth, Nikhil D'Souza, Raja Hasan, Aditi Singh Sharma and Shriram Iyer performing with him. There was a Coke Studio concert at IIM Bangalore on 22 November 2013, featuring Amit Trivedi along with Tochi Raina, Shriram Iyer, Tanvi Shah, Mili Nair, Jaggi. He also performed for the Bacardi NH7 Weekender (music festival) which happened in Pune, Delhi, and Hyderabad. In January 2016, he performed at Quo Vadis, the annual fest of Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi. On 1 February 2016, he performed at Spring Fest, the annual festival of IIT Kharagpur along with the likes of Neeti Mohan, Yashita Sharma and Divya Kumar (singer). He is performing at Chembur Gymkhana on 4 March 2017. He performed on 19 March 2017 at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar. On 26 March 2017, he performed along with Jonita Gandhi and Divya Kumar (singer) at Aura, the annual festival of Gogte Institute of Technology.He also composed a nation song incorporating all his popular genres and celebrating unity through an amalgamation of folk music from different states of the nation at the Mirchi Music Awards held in 2017.