Profile
Shamir Tandon is the founder of Music Boutique, a one-stop music solutions enterprise. He is an Indian composer, music director and producer who creates melting-pot, multicultural music intermingled with electronic sounds and traditional orchestral arrangements, often carrying a Hindustani semi-classical base.
Popularly known as “rhythm whisperer” for musicians and singers alike, Shamir is the only Music Director to have composed for Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Manna Dey, Jagjit Singh, Bhupinder Singh, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and many more industry doyens.
early influences
Shamir grew up on a steady diet of music in the form of compositions and performances during school and college festivals. Despite acquiring a Cost Accountancy and Master in Business Administration degrees, he followed his passion for creating music by walking a different path from the summit of a successful corporate career.
WORKING WITH LEGENDS
Shamir has been blessed to have legends sing under his baton. He is the only music director who has composed for Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Manna Dey, Jagjit Singh, Bhupinder Singh, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and many more.
transformation
Shamir started working with EMI Virgin in 1998. In his nine year stint with Virgin, he grew from a Marketing Manager to a Country Head, instinctually bringing the freshness of singers like Shaan and Shubha Mudgal to the Indian audience. Besides nurturing Indian talent, Shamir played a key role in marketing and distributing global acts like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Frank Sinatra, Norah Jones, Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue. He was also instrumental in bringing bands like Deep Purple, Rolling Stone, MLTR and the French maestro Richard Clayderman to perform in India. With 12 years of Corporate experience under his belt, he finally decided to transition all the way into the music industry. With his ear always trained to the musical ground, Shamir brings a distinctive blend of corporate pragmatism, cultural sensitivity, and artiste sensibility to inform his life and music.
musical repertoire
Shamir has composed over 150 ad jingles for celebrated brands, such as Ambuja Cement, Idea, Big Bazaar, ICICI, Pepsi, Samsonite, SBI, LIC, Airtel, and more. In 2006-07, he curated and composed for the No. 1 album of 2006-2007, Asha & Friends, which comprised Asha Bhonsle—the golden soprano of Indian music—to sing with Sanjay Dutt, Urmila Matondkar, Brett Lee, and others: an out-of-the-box musical idea to foster inclusion in the industry.
Bringing people together through music is the ethos of every Shamir Tandon composition. He composed the 2007 Cricket World Cup anthem, where 11 leading singers sang together to encourage team spirit in a cut-throat global championship sport.
To uphold fair and just standards for musicians, Shamir collaborated with the top singers of the Indian Film Industry to pioneer the release of an anti-piracy song. His non-film album for the top four winners of Indian Idol 6 comprised five original tracks and four unique renditions of the hugely popular song Pal, sung by KayKay, for each of the winners. Shamir's most recent musical cause has been to connect a compendium of skillful singers from various genres of music to come together and pay tribute to the vast body of work of the ghazal maestro, Jagjit Singh, and revive it for a contemporary audience.
INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIONS
Most of Shamir’s compositions hum the language of coming together, and the quiddity of his musical solutions rests on bringing artists from different blends, walks, genres of music and life under the Music Boutique umbrella. Besides getting Brett Lee and Robbie Williams to sing with the evergreen Asha Bhonsle, he has collaborated with the boy band Blue for the song One Love, featuring Abhishek Bachchan and Bipasha Basu. The song Heartbeat featured on Enrique Iglesias’s album blended the varying voices of Enrique and Sunidhi Chauhan, two artists from diverse cultures. For the film, Bluffmaster, Shamir worked with Jay Sean and other European artists.
BOLLYWOOD
Shamir’s debut in Bollywood was the National Award-winning film Page 3. After the success of Page 3, he went on to compose for Madhur Bhandarkar’s subsequent two films, Corporate and Traffic Signal. Moving deftly from soft lyrical compositions to upbeat popular numbers gave him the versatility to work with prominent content-makers like Balaji, UTV Motion Pictures, Disney, Ashtavinayak, Shemaroo, Sahara, Viacom 18, Percept, Sangeet Sivan, Sanjay Gupta, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, et al. Shamir’s music can range from thoughtful, introspective numbers like Lamha Lamha Zindagi Hai to the energetic qawwali O Sikander, which trended top of the charts in 2006.
CONSULTATION
Besides composing music, Shamir consults for many brands, production houses and agencies, bringing his valuable corporate experience to the forefront. His present-day clients include Universal Music Group for their A&R (Artists & Repertoire) and Digital Music space. Rahat Fateh Ali’s album Back To Love, which won Mirchi And GIMA awards, is another feather in his list of artiste repertoire and music consultancy.