Gayathri Khemadasa

Sri Lanken composer (born 1976)

Gayathri Khemadasa is a Sri Lankan composer and contemporary classical pianist. Born in 1976 in Colombo, she is the daughter of Premasiri Khemadasa. She was educated at Ladies College, Colombo and studied music at the Prague Conservatory and Masaryk University, Czech Republic.[1] She began performing in public in 2005, in order to raise money for the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami.[2] In 2011, she was awarded a Fulbright Professional Scholarship and became a visiting scholar at Wesleyan University where she began writing an opera on Phoolan Devi.[3] In 2015, at the Derana Film Awards, Khemadasa became the first Sri Lankan woman to win a national award for Best Original Score with the film Thanha Rathi Ranga. The following year, she won the award for Best Music Director at the Hiru Golden Film Award for the same film.[4] In 2022, at the Ceylon International Film Festival in California, She became the first Sri Lankan to win an international award for Best Music with the film The Newspaper.[5] Two more additional awards followed in November 2023 at the Presidential Film Awards where she won Best Song Melody and Best Music Director.[6]

## References

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1. ^ "From father to daughter: The music flows on". Sunday Times. 25 January 2009.
2. ^ "A haunting meeting of Eastern and Western music". The Prague Post. 18 June 2008.
3. ^ "India's Malcolm X: The New South Asia Film Series Highlights "Phoolan Devi Opera"". The Wesleyan Argus. 12 April 2012.
4. ^ "Award for Gayathri". Sunday Times. 6 December 2015.
5. ^ "Gayathri creates history winning first foreign award for cinema music". Sunday Times. 26 June 2022.
6. ^ "Presidential Film Awards brings a rain of stars". Sunday Observer. 19 November 2023. Archived from the original on November 18, 2023.