Arrol Corelli

Early life and Career

Arrol Corelli was born and brought up in Maraimalainagar near Chennai in a middle-class family. He started learning Indian Classical Violin at the age 5 under Shri. Ravi Kumar and later on under Kumari A. Kanyakumari. At a very young age, Corelli started performing in various music concerts across south India and has also won several prizes in the competitions held at The Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha, Mylapore Fine Arts etc. He started learning Western Classical Piano at the age of 10 from Trinity College of Music, London. Corelli did his schooling at Shri Anand Jain Vidhyala, Tambaram and became a qualified Chartered Accountant in the year 2007.

While continuing in his finance career, he also worked on his dream to become a film music composer and approached film director Mysskin after his critically acclaimed film Onaayum Aattukkuttiyum. Upon the good impressions made with him, director Mysskin offered him to score the music for his next film Pisaasu produced by director Bala. Feeling that Arul was quite a common name in Tamil cinema, Arul requested director Mysskin for a name change who gave Arul the stage name Arrol Corelli, after the composer Arcangelo Corelli, an Italian composer in the 17th-18th century, who was also a violinist. "Nathi pogum koozhangal payanam" - the only song in Pisaasu, which was written by Tamizhachi Thangapandian and sung by Baby Uthara Unnikrishnan was unanimously accepted by everyone for its soul-stirring melody and the violin interludes performed by Corelli himself. His work on the background score of the movie which had symphonic compositions with fully acoustic instrumentation was also unanimously appreciated by both critics and the general audience. Indiaglitz on its review wrote "Arrol is off to a dream debut and the opening song just sweeps our feet off". According to Behindwoods, "Arrol Corelli’s violins are beautiful with his BGM rendering the right depth to the narration". International Business Times wrote "Pissasu music elevates the film to great heights. Those violins will tug at your heartstrings". Sify in its review termed the background as "Outstanding". Corelli was also nominated in the Best Background Score category at the 2015 Vijay Awards for Pisaasu while Uthara Unnikrishnan won the Best Female Singer Award 2015 for the only song "Nathi pogum koozhangal payanam". Corelli subsequently received an offer to work with director Pandiraj's Pasanga 2 - Haiku produced by actor Suriya's 2D Entertainment. The soundtrack features four songs and a theme music, the lyrics for which are written by Na. Muthukumar, Madhan Karky and Yugabharathi . The album gathered positive response from both critics and music lovers while Behindwoods rated the music album 3 out of 5 and called it "Pasanga 2 is a feel good album which stays true to the film’s theme". Sify rated the album 3 out of 5 and called it "On the whole, Arrol Correli follows up Pisasu with yet another impressive outing in ‘Pasanga 2’. The entire album is pleasant, feel-good & caters to the needs of the movie"

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