Harris Jayaraj
Birth Name : Harris Jayaraj
Also known as HJ, Harris
Born : 8 January 1975
Age : 41
Born Place : Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Genres : Film score, World music
Occupations : Music composer, record producer, music director, arranger, orchestrator, conductor, lyricist, song writer
Instruments : Guitar, synthesizer, piano, percussion, keyboard
Years active : 2001 - present
Harris Jayaraj
Harris Jayaraj (born 8 January 1975) is an Indian film composer from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He composes scores and soundtracks predominantly for Tamil films, while also having composed for a few films in Telugu and Hindi languages
Early Life
Harris Jayaraj was brought up in Chennai, He was born into a middle class Tamil Christian Nadar family .He studied at Krishnaswamy Matric School, K. K. Nagar. His father, S. M. Jayakumar, was a noted film guitarist and an assistant to Malayalam music director Shyam and later became a noted musician and film composer. At age six, Harris began his formal training in carnatic music. His father wanted him to become a guitarist and made him learn classical guitar from Mr.A.Abdul Sattar. Harris scored the highest mark inAsia on his 4th grade exam of Trinity College of Music, London.
He started his music career as a guitarist in 1987 at age twelve.After befitting as a guitar player, he started playing keyboard and developed interest over synthesizers. He then started programming with his Roland MC-500 and went on to work as a programmer under more than twenty five music directors in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Malayalam, working in more than 600 projects till the year 2000.He worked under noted composers including Raj-Koti, A. R. Rahman, Mani Sharma,Karthik Raja, Vidyasagar. While working as an additional programmer under Rahman, he composed music for various television commercials including a Coca-Cola commercial featuring actor Vijay. In his early years, he admired music composers M. S. Viswanathan, percussionist Aruljothi Balagopal, A. R. Rahman and Hans Zimmer.
Personal Life
Harris is married to Suma, the couple have a son named Samuel Nicholas and a daughter named Keren Nikita. Harris prefers to work in his studio known as Trinity Studios which he has established in his own residence.
Film Career
Harris ventured into film scoring with Gautham Menon's Minnale. The album was well received, particularly the song Vaseegara was exceptionally popular. He received the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director – Tamil for his work in Minnale, breaking the 9 years continuous record of A. R. Rahman. The following soundtrack albums 12B and Majunu met with high acclaim and praise. His Minnale score was later used in the Hindi version, titled Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein also directed by Gautham Menon. He then worked in Lesa Lesa directed by Priyadarshan. The title track of Lesa Lesa was the first song in India to be released as a single prior to a film soundtrack album release (The first ever single to be released prior to an album was Anaida's "hotline"). Harris made his debut in Tollywood with Vasu. He received the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director – Tamil, Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Music Director and ITFA Best Music Director Award for Kaakha Kaakha, starring Suriya and Jyothika. This film directed by Gautham Menon was a huge commercial success and the songs met with great critical acclaim. In its Telugu remake Gharshana two new songs apart from the Tamil version were added to suit the taste of Telugu audience. The song Uyirin Uyire reused as Cheliya Cheliyain Telugu and Khwabon Khwabon in Hindi had effective use of gibberish words which later became a signature element in Harris songs.
See all awards and nominations of Harris here : AWARDS
Harris once again paired up with director Jeeva on Ullam Ketkumae after 12B. The music was appreciated for its excellency and synergy with the atmosphere in and out of the movie. Director S. Shankar, noted leading director of Tamil cinema, paired up with Harris in his magnum opus Anniyan. It was the first time Shankar did not team up with A. R. Rahman. Shankar later mentioned that working with Harris was an experience. The soundtrack album received several awards including Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Music Director and Filmfare Award for Best Music Director – Tamil. The next film he scored was Ghajini directed by AR Murugadoss, for which he received Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Music Director.Critics noted that the album had "scintillating, party-hopping numbers", which resulted in a huge commercial success in audio sales; the track "Sutum Vizhi" crossed 20 million downloads and turned out to be phenomenally successful. Harris crafted a necessary classiness into Gautham Menon's blockbuster crime thriller Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu starring Kamal Haasan Gautham revealed that he shares the entire script with Harris and provides input's from his side
See all Movies list of Harris here : Movies
Live in concert
In 2011, Harris announced his first musical world tour titled "Harris on the Edge". The tour featured live performance of Harris all over the world accompanied by a troupe of Tamil playback singers, including Karthik, Haricharan, Chinmayi, Tippu, Harini, Naresh Iyer, Harish Raghavendra, Krish, Aalap Raju, KK, Benny Dayal, Andrea, Suvi Suresh, Sunitha Sarathy,Srilekha Parthasarathy and Shweta Menon and international musicians and dancers.The event was coordinated by Techfront and was directed by A. L. Vijay. The whole tour was covered by Jaya TV.
Ad Jingles
He composed music for various television commercials including a Coca-Cola commercial featuring Vijay (actor). In 2008, he composed for Herova? Zerova? ad campaign which Suriya initiated under the Agaram Foundation, working to help children who drop out of school early in Tamil Nadu. With the Ministry of Education in Tamil Nadu, he created a short commercial video outlining child poverty, labour and lack of education, titled Herova? Zerova?. The film was written and produced by Sivakumar and also starred Suriya, Vijay, R. Madhavan and Jyothika.
