Nainita Desai

Emmy 2022 and RTS winning composer, Nainita Desai, was the World Soundtrack Awards 2021 winner for Discovery of the Year. A Ivor Novello and double BIFA awards nominee Nainita was described by Empire magazine as one of the top 5 composers to watch for in 2022 and in leading UK film critic Mark Kermode's Top 3 Film Scores of 2021. Nainita's recent projects include Oscar nominated and Bafta & Cannes winning film For Sama, the Emmy winning score for The Reason I Jump, the Netflix documentary 14 Peaks produced by Oscar winner Jimmy Chinn for which her score also earned her Emmy nomination, as well as the interactive film-video game Immortality that released August 2022 on Netflix games, Steam and Xbox Pass. Recent projects include, Crossfire (Keeley Hawes) for BBC1, The Tower (Gemma Whelan) for ITV, upcoming Funny Woman (Gemma Arterton) for SKY, a fantasy drama series for Disney+ as well as landmark series for Apple TV+ , James Cameron / Nat Geo, and 'Immortality' an interactive film trilogy / video game Bafta nominated American Murder [Netflix's most watched documentary of 2020]. Following a degree in Mathematics, Nainita began her career as a sound designer on feature films for directors including Werner Herzog and Bertolucci, as well as music engineering for Peter Gabriel. Nainita moves seamlessly between working with orchestras, to scores utilizing her collection of custom-made instruments, incorporating electronics, found sound, and experimental sound design which has informed her experimental, deeply immersive approach.

Nainita was born and brought up in London to Indian parents and her eclectic musical upbringing led her to studying the sitar, piano, guitar, tabla, singing and violin. Following a degree in Maths and attending the NFTS to study sound for film, As a sound designer, Nainita worked on feature films for Bertolucci (Little Buddha); and Werner Herzog (Lessons of Darkness) including Backbeat (Dir: Ian Softley), August (Dir: Anthony Hopkins), and cult cyber-feature Hackers (Angelina Jolie). Her passion for music technology then led to her working in music engineering with Peter Gabriel during the legendary Real World Recording Week sessions, and working with artists including Billy Cobham, Daniel Lanois, Jane Sibbery, Nigel Kennedy, Sinead O'Connor, and Ravi Shankar.