"My parents played an important role in my career" – Arjuna Harjai

Young composer Arjuna Harjai’s last composed song Aankhein from Do Lafzon Ki Kahani created a lot of waves among the listeners.

Talking about his early influence in music Arjuna says,

“My music journey stared very early, I started learning from my parents Madhusudan Harjai and Lakshmi Madhusudan at the age of two and a half.

I got great exposure since childhood as my mother was a renowned artist in the Delhi recording circuit, I used to go with her for her recordings and sit quietly next to the sound engineers and observe the entire recording process. Back then everything used to be recorded live all musicians and singers all together,it was great fun.My parents played an important role in training me, dad taught me Ghazals of artists like Mehendi Hassan Sahab, Gulam Ali Sahab , Hussain Bux Sahab, Madhurani Faizabadiand it helped me immensely in my basic foundation as a musician.”

Arjuna also adds,

“Later I started studying western classical piano from Delhi School of Music at the age of 8 and also trained in tabla for a year.My goals of becoming a Music Directer were very clear, in 2006 I shifted to Mumbai and joined Suresh Wadekar’s Gurukul to further study Indian Classical music, I also did my Audio Engineering Course from SAE institute and passed out in 2008 as top scorer.My learning continued, I further did higher grades in Piano ( Trinity and ABRSM ) , my interest was more inclined towards pieces by Claude Debussy & Toru Takemitsu, this is when I developed interest in Jazz music and I got really inspired by Jazz Pianist and Composer Hiromi Uehara.”

In India Arjuna’s inspirations are Madan Mohan and AR Rehman . After he assisted Music Director Lalit Pandit in 2011 – 2012 he started working independently as Music Director and signed Titoo MBA in 2013.