Lifetime Achievement - Nitin Sawhney

By definition, those receiving an Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement – and they have previously included the likes of David Gilmour, Damon Albarn, Van Morrison and Pete Townshend – tend to have enjoyed some fairly significant moments during those lifetimes. But Nitin Sawhney has crammed so many incredible things into his 25 year-plus career that he makes even some of the highest-flyers look like under-achievers.

Going through every single one of them here would require turning over the entire programme to him (as The Guardian once noted, “It would be easier to jot down what this man can’t do than what he can”) but suffice to say it seems that, since emerging as a backing band player on the Acid Jazz scene, second fiddle is about the only instrument he hasn’t mastered.

So this is a man who has released 10 solo albums, including the Mercury Prize nominated Beyond Skin (1999) and the MOBO Award winning Prophecy (2001). His recordings have attracted collaborations with everyone from Imogen Heap and Paul McCartney to Antony Gormley and John Hurt. He’s won more awards than La La Land and Adele put together.

He’s also in phenomenal demand as a scorer of film, TV, theatre, video games and commercials, where his work ranges from classical to jazz to electronica. You’ll have heard him scoring everything from Channel 4’s Second Generation to the BBC’s Wonders of the Monsoon natural history project to the movie adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children to martial arts video game Heavenly Sword to a Nike advert.

And we haven’t even mentioned his work as a producer, multi-instrumentalist, DJ, co-writer, arranger, musical educator or artist in residence at countless international festivals yet.

The 2017 Ivor Novello Awards 51 We can only hope that today, as the industry comes together to celebrate all his magnificent achievements, that Sawhney himself has, for once, time to sit back, relax and enjoy it.