Vivek Maddala is an international award-winning composer and multi-instrumental performer. His music blends melodic symphony writing with syncopated jazz idioms and modern ethnic textures -- from European neo-Romanticism to South Asian raga; from modern rock to French Impressionism. The result has been described as "an emotive frenzy of guitar, percussion, brass, woodwinds, and strings."

In 2000, at the age of 26, Vivek won the first Grand Prize in the national Young Film Composers Competition and he was invited to study in the prestigious ASCAP Film Scoring program two years later. In 2005, Vivek’s score for The Patsy won the JPF award for Best Soundtrack Album of the Year. In October of 2006, Vivek served as the guest conductor for the Third Angle New Music Ensemble, performing his work as part of their 2006-2007 concert season. In 2007 Vivek’s score for the James Franco film Grasshopper was nominated for a Film & TV Music Award. Three of his film scores received gold medals and audience awards in the 2008 and 2009 Park City Film Music Festival, and Vivek was named a Fellow of the Sundance Institute in 2008 for film music composition.

In addition to film scoring, Vivek has produced and written music for a number of rock, jazz, and world music CD releases -- including with artists Stephen Bishop and Wendy Starland. Further, Vivek's music has been covered in feature news stories by NPR, the Associated Press, CNN, Democracy Now!, Variety, and Entertainment Tonight.

In 2008, Vivek was commissioned by the internationally renowned dance company BodyVox to compose the score for their modern ballet, Horizontal Leanings. The work explores diverse themes, such as community survival and cultural identity, while contrasting the fragmented world of friction and alienation with a cohesive world of collective effort. The production fuses innovative choreography with Vivek’s postmodern music composition, and it premiered to packed theaters in the Summer of 2008.

Vivek has always sought to write music in the service of achieving social progress -- to comment on the world as it is, and hopefully to affect it positively. His score for They Turned Our Desert Into Fire blends North African percussion with shadowy string textures and haunting vocals to illuminate the film's story of the ongoing genocide in Darfur and the associated humanitarian crisis of refugee camps on the continent. His brooding, passionate score for Ace of Hearts invokes the broken social and economic structures that promote poverty and injustice here in the US (and elsewhere around the globe). Accordingly, Vivek continues to seek out projects that lift the human spirit -- to challenge the function of war and elucidate the human condition.

When writing music for visual media, Vivek speaks with his own personal style, his own musical voice. His scores supplement and strengthen the narrative and emotional components, characterizing and framing the picture -- above all, serving the dramatic vision of the director. Elegant musical motifs and careful orchestration combine to give Vivek's music a distinctive flavor that moves gracefully between tradition and innovation; with equal parts euphoria and introspection; frantic while elegant; drunken yet precise; and utterly human.

Honors and Awards

• Grand Prize in the Young Film Composers Competition (2000)
  
• ASCAP Film Scoring Fellowship (2002)
  
• International JPF award for Best Soundtrack Album of the Year (2005) – The Patsy
  
• Reviewer's Pick for 2006, Pro Audio Review
  
• Electronic Musician 2007 Editor's Choice Award
  
• Future Music ACE Award (2007)
  
• Film & TV Music Award nomination (2007), Grasshopper
  
• MusicTech Choice Award (2007)
  
• Gold Medal for Artistic Excellence, Park City Film Music Festival, Wild Oranges (2008)
  
• Gold Medal for Artistic Excellence, Audience Favorite, Park City Film Music Festival, Grasshopper (2008)
  
• Sundance Composer Fellow (2008)
  
• Gold Medal for Artistic Excellence, Audience Favorite, Park City Film Music Festival, They Turned Our Desert Into Fire (2009)
  
• BMI Conducting Workshop (2009)

2010 Kaboom
2010 Red Dust
2009 A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps
2008 Horizontal Leanings
2008 Flash Gordon (TV Series, additional music)
2007 They Turned Our Desert Into Fire *
2007 Whispers from Poland
2007 Walking Tall
2007 Ice Spiders (co-composer)
2007 Nuclear Hurricane (co-composer)
2007 Flash Gordon (TV Series, additional music)
2006 Grasshopper *
2006 Wild Oranges *
2005 Portland at Play
2005 Catch Up
2005 The Ring
2005 Mother
2005 Moon Chasing
2005 Omar and Fiona
2004 Gidoo's Cosmic Crisis
2004 The Patsy *
2003 Martha's Bakery
2002 Mysterious Lady
2002 Equation
2001 The Flag
2000 Ace of Hearts *


* indicates award winner