Ehsaan Noorani

35 Years experience in Blues, Rock, Fusion

Ehsaan Noorani is an acclaimed veteran guitarist in India’s vibrant film music world, with a long and impressive list of recording, performing and film scoring credits. He is part of the hugely successful trio SEL (Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy) - India’s towering presence in the field of cinematic music and composition. He is considered to be India’s most eminent guitarist, recently honored by Fender/Squier through the release of the Ehsaan Noorani Stratocaster signature model.

Born in India, Ehsaan started playing guitar at age 13 and took formal lessons while in high school. His first band, Pegasus, covered songs by the Allman Brothers, Heart, Wishbone Ash and other similar acts, and he steadily improved as a guitarist of formidable skill. He joined his second band, Crosswinds, in 1982 and moved up to a more demanding regimen of covers, including artists such as Santana, Steely Dan, Lee Ritenour and Frank Zappa. He came to the US in 1985, attending the Guitar Institute of Technology (now the Musicians Institute) in LA, where he studied under Danny Gilbert, Robben Ford, Steve Trovato and Keith Wyatt. He returned to India in 1986 and almost immediately gained entrance to the busy world of film and commercial scoring sessions. He met composer Shankar Mahadevan and keyboardist Loy Mendonsa to form SEL.

The SEL trio subsequently composed a great deal of highly successful Bollywood film music and racked up more than 40 number-one hits in India. Ehsaan has won India’s National Award for Excellence in Music in 2004 for the soundtrack of Kal Ho Na Ho; he also won the Star Screen, Filmfare and IIFA awards for music for Dil Chahta Hai, Kal Ho Na Ho; Bunty Aur Babli and My Name Is Khan among others. SEL also composed music for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India, and the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup, in addition to performing at both events.

Although Ehsaan has experimented with different styles of music including rock, metal, classical, country and electronic, his passion continues to lie with blues, which he plays with his current band, ‘Apostrophe’.

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