Creative Music Practice: Connecting the Audio and Visual Worlds

Ashutosh Phatak is a multi-instrumentalist performer and producer. With over 15 contemporary music albums in the last two decades to his name, he is a much-in demand composer in the advertising and films circles. He has composed music for over 4,000 television commercials and soundtrack for over 10 feature films, including critically acclaimed films like Tamanna (1997), Bombay Boys (1998), White Noise(2004) and acclaimed documentary, Fire in the Blood (2013). A popular figure on the live music scene in India plus a regular at the festival circuit, Ashu has also performed at the Mahindra Blues Festival, Sulafest, NH7 festival, Sunburn as well as international festivals such as South by South West (SXSW) to mention a few. He continues to perform with, and produce, multiple bands across India. Ashu has been at the forefront of the change that has swept across the music landscape in India in the past eight years. He was one of the founding partners of BlueFrog, a brand that single-handedly changed the face of the live independent music scene in India. In 2013, Ashu co-founded the True School of Music, India’s first comprehensive institute of contemporary music. True School: Learn to Sing is a vocal learning app that he conceptualized and developed. Currently he is also a faculty member at True School of Music where he teaches Music in Advertising. In 2017, Ashu co-founded ‘The Quarter’ a unique concept consisting of 4 distinct venues, a live music club, cocktail bar, restaurant and café nestled in Mumbai’s heritage Royal Opera House. Programming includes the best of Jazz, Indie, Folk, World etc. and specially curated one of a kind collaborations.

Dr. Andrew Connor is a Teaching Fellow, Design and Digital Media, University of Edinburgh. He runs courses in 3D modelling and animation, integrated design media, and games design theory for the Design and Digital Media MSc programme. Having started his career worked in radio, film and television, primarily in the BBC's World Service, Drama and Children's Interactive departments, Andrew took the University of Edinburgh's MSc programme in Sound Design in 2007-2008. He continued on to complete a PhD in Creative Music Practice at the University in 2017. His principal area of research is in the close relationship between sound and vision in immersive audiovisual creative works. His current practice combines electroacoustic music composition, abstraction in 3D animation, and immersive virtual environments. Andrew's audiovisual compositions have been performed in Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece and the USA. He has an active interest in ECA's international connections, particularly with regard to developing links with designers, sound designers, and digital artists in India.

Yati Durant is a Lecturer, Music, Sound & Moving Image, University of Edinburgh. After receiving a commission from The Juilliard School for his string symphony The Ship, he began studies in composition at the State Conservatory of Music in Cologne, Germany with Polish composer Krzysztof Meyer. Yati holds several diplomas under Krzysztof Meyer, as well as an Electronic Composition diploma under Hans Ulrich Humpert. His critically acclaimed new score to Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent film The Battleship Potemkin earned him a prestigious first Meisterklasse Konzertexam in 2006. He has also studied with George Crumb, Philip Lasser, Narcis Bonet, Lee Konitz and conducting with Jonathan Brett. Since 2010, Yati is Lecturer of Music, Sound and Moving Image at the Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh and Director of the Edinburgh Film Music Orchestra. He is Director of the European Education Alliance for Music and Sound in Media at Soundtrack Cologne. He has lectured at Conservatories and Universities across Europe, and is frequently invited to International film festivals, such as the Festival du Film Aubagne and the World Festival of Animated Film Varna, to contribute to their programmes and run workshops. His compositions and films have received many prizes from International festivals, including a 3rd Pl. Panorama Public Prize at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival for Erika Rabau – Der Puck von Berlin and a BAFA National Commerce Film Award nomination for the WDR/ARD documentary Ein Klavier geht um die Welt. He is a finalist of the 2009 Concorso Giovani Musicisti Europei in Aosta, Italy with his score to C. Chaplin’s The Vagabond. His contemporary compositions have been performed in New York, throughout Europe and Brazil, released on CD and DVD by Film Dienst/Normal Records, Filmmuseum München and he remains an active performer of jazz, with regular appearances and recordings throughout Europe and USA.