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Shankar Ehsaan Loy
Ehsaan (left) Shankar (Middle) and Loy (Right)
Background information
Genres	Indian film music
Occupations	Music director & singer
Years active	1997–present
Associated acts	Shakti

Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy (Hindi: शंकर - एहसान - लोय) is an Indian musical trio consisting of Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa. Formed in India, they teamed together to provide music for several Indian films. Some of their famous works includes scores for movies such as Mission Kashmir (2000), Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), Bunty Aur Babli (2005) , Taare Zameen Par (2007), Rock on!! (2008) and My Name is Khan (2010).

Early life

Ehsaan was doing jingles and Loy was in Delhi before the union. Loy was writing for television then. There was a show called quiz time and Siddharth Basu gave him his first break. Then he did Prannoy Roy's 'The World This Week'. Then a few more shows came along and he also did theatre. There was Shahrukh's Fauji as well. Then he came to Bombay and started doing jingles. He hooked up with Ehsaan and they started playing with music. Ehsaan also gave music for the hit sitcom Shanti. Then Shankar came and did a few parts on the Indian bit.^[1] Loy worked as Keyboardist with A.R. Rahman and Shankar sang many famous tracks for him.

Style

Each member of this trio brings his own talents and experiences to the group, combining the Carnatic and Hindustani vocal tradition (Shankar), Western rock (Ehsaan) and a deep understanding of fusion including a virtual mastery over the electronic synthesizer (Loy). They continue a tradition quite common in Bollywood music, that of partnerships between music composers contributing and pooling their individual strengths, sometimes combining deep knowledge of Hindustani (North Indian) or Carnatic (South Indian) classical music and technical expertise as composers and orchestral arrangers. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy probably represent the first 'trio' of music composers to entertain Bollywood audiences with their chart-topping music. They are slowly becoming popular by the title 'Amar-Akbar-Anthony' of Bollywood music.

The eternal quest among Bollywood's music composers has been to create interest among younger audiences who tend to be inspired more by musical themes and influences from the west. Since a film's music (soundtrack) is a very influential and critical component of commercial and critical success required and achieved or sometimes squandered at the box office, this quest to "deliver a film" has always inspired music composers to create tunes which combine the best of both traditional Indian music and popular western or international influences and an overwhelming majority of Bollywood's most popular music has been composed based on Classical Indian rāgas (in Sanskrit "Raga" is literally "colour" or "mood"). Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have successfully bridged that gap. They have won and continue to win critical and commercial acclaim and several awards from the Bollywood Press and Magazines, TV Channels and a National Film Award (Kal Ho Naa Ho, 2003)^{[citation needed]}. Their success owes to several contributing factors, among which are the adoption of interesting musical instruments and sounds as part of their orchestral palette, introduction of new voices weaned on popular TV Musical Talent shows and an obsession for the right musical 'feel' for the movie scene leading into a song sequence.

Frequent collaborators

Shankar Ehsaan Loy have composed for all films produced by Excel Entertainments, except Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd., founded by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani. They have also associated frequently with Karan Johar's Dharma Productions, and has composed for his directorial ventures since Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. One of their most noted work, Kal Ho Naa Ho was with Dharma Productions too. Other notable collaborations are with directors like Nikhil Advani, Shaad Ali and Sajid Khan.

Their collaboration with lyricist Javed Akhtar, is considered as one of the most successful collaborations in Indian cinema.Though most of the songs composed by the trio are penned by Javed Akhtar, they have also associated with lyricists like Gulzar, and Prasoon Joshi.

Awards

The trio won several awards including Filmfare awards (Bunty Aur Babli, Kal Ho Naa Ho), RD Burman Award (Dil Chahta Hai) and Star screen awards (Mission Kashmir, Bunty Aur Babli, Dil Chahta Hai). In 2004, they bagged the National award for the film Kal Ho Naa Ho.

Filmography

As music directors