Mani Sharma

Yanamandra Venkata Subrahmanya Sharma (born 11 July 1964), known professionally as Mani Sharma, is an Indian composer and music producer known primarily for his work in the Telugu and Tamil film industries; he has also worked on Hindi and Kannada films.

Mani Sharma was born Yanamandra Venkata Subrahmanya Sharma on 11 July 1964 in Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, and grew up in Chennai. His father was a violinist who played with composer and music producer Saluru Rajeswara Rao.

Sharma began his career programming under S. Rajeswara Rao and other composers including Ramesh Naidu and M. M. Keeravani. Film director Ram Gopal Varma had him compose the background music for Raathri and Antham (both 1992), plus a song for Antham. As music director, he has worked on several films with producer Ashwini Dutt, starting with Super Heroes. As of July 2023[update] he has been music director on more than 200 films, for the most part Telugu but also including 25 Tamil productions and several in Kannada. His first hit was Preminchukundam Raa (1997); Choodalani Vundi and Samarasimha Reddy in particular have been highly successful. He has also collaborated on albums with many actors, including Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna, Mahesh Babu, Pawan Kalyan and Ram Charan.

His works are noted for integrating Indian with Western classical instrumentation. He is sometimes known as Melody Brahma and Swara Bramha.

Composers including S. Thaman, Devi Sri Prasad and Harris Jayaraj worked under him in their early days.[10]

He has received two state Nandi Awards, three Filmfare Awards South, two CineMAA Awards and three Mirchi Music Awards South for Best Music Direction.