Bio
“Ranjan’s orchestral soundtrack hits you in the heart...It’s spine-tingling stuff, spine-tingling! ”
Rushil Ranjan is a London-based composer and producer whose work brings orchestral and choral music into conversation with South Asian classical and Sufi traditions. Working across concert performance, dance and film, he creates music shaped by the expressive power of the human voice, devotional poetry and the scale of the symphony orchestra.
He is Associate Artist at the Royal Albert Hall, Collaborative Artist with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Partner at Manchester Camerata. A self-taught composer, he is also a recipient of the PRS Foundation’s Composers’ Fund.
In April 2026, he collaborated with A. R. Rahman on A. R. Rahman x Rushil Ranjan at the Royal Albert Hall. The programme included Rangreza, a new work co-composed by Rahman and Ranjan for Abi Sampa, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and London Voices.
Rushil is the co-founder and composer of the Orchestral Qawwali Project, created with vocalist Abi Sampa. His scores bring the poetry and devotional intensity of qawwali into a symphonic setting, alongside Indian classical dance. The project has played to sold-out audiences at the Royal Albert Hall, Camden Roundhouse, Birmingham Symphony Hall and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, building a growing international audience for this meeting of musical traditions.
His concert works include Ruhaniyat, premiered at Manchester International Festival 2025 with Manchester Camerata and vocalists Jyoti Nooran, Abi Sampa and Sarthak Kalyani; Khwaa-ish, a choral work premiered with the National Youth Choir at the Southbank Centre; and Shikwa, a symphonic interpretation of Muhammad Iqbal’s Urdu poem, created with Abi Sampa and Manchester Camerata.
For dance, he composed the score for Songs of the Bulbul, performed by Aakash Odedra with choreography by Rani Khanam and premiered at Edinburgh International Festival in 2024. His latest work includes The Absence of PRESENCE, an NCPA commission with Aditi Mangaldas and the Symphony Orchestra of India, premiering in Mumbai in October 2026.
Alongside his concert and stage work, Rushil has composed for film and television projects associated with Netflix, ITV, Film4 and the BFI. Across these different settings, his music explores how traditions, voices and stories can find new expression through the orchestra.