Bhaskar Chandavarkar

Bhaskar Chandavarkar (16 March 1936 – 26 July 2009) was an Indian sitar player, academic and film and theatre composer who worked with well-known directors of Indian cinema like Mrinal Sen, Girish Karnad, Aparna Sen, K. G. George and Amol Palekar in various languages including Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Oriya and was known for his blending of Indian classical and western music.He taught at FTII, Pune for many years, and during his career as a music composer he worked for 40 films, and is most known for his work in films such as Amol Palekar's Aakreit and Thoda Sa Rumani Ho Jaayen, Girish Karnad's Ondanondu Kaladalli, Jabbar Patel's Samna, Mrinal Sen's Khandhar, Vijaya Mehta's Rao Saheb, Chitra Palekar's Maati Maay and K. G. George's Swapnadanam.He has given music to films which are considered classics in their respective languages, like: Vamsha Vriksha (1971), Ondanondu Kaladalli (1978) in Kannada, Maya Darpan (1972), Khandhar (1984) in Hindi, Swapnadanam (1975) in Malayalam, Paroma (1984) in Bengali, Maya Miriga (1984) in Oriya, Shwaas (2004) in Marathi, etc.

He received the President's National Film Award for Music direction in the Marathi short film Chaitra directed by Kranti Kanade in 2002.