Ilayaraja ranked no. 9 in global ranking of Top 25 Composers

San Francisco: The Taste of Cinema web site has positioned Ilayaraja no. 9 in the global ranking of top 25 Film Composers ever.

Following is the note on Ilayaraja published in the global ranking announcement:

"Ilaiyaraaja is an Indian film composer who works in the Indian film Industry. His body of work has spanned across Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi and English language films.

Regarded as one of the finest music composers in India, Ilaiyaraaja is also an instrumentalist, conductor, singer, and a songwriter. To date, he has composed over 4500 songs and provided film scores for more than 950 Indian films in various languages, particularly being acclaimed for his background scoring. His songs and background score played a very crucial role in the success of many films."

Following is the global ranking of musicians in 'The 25 Greatest Film Composers in Cinema History':

No    Musician Name    Country
1    Ennio Morricone    ITALY
2    Max Steiner    USA
3    John Williams    USA
4    Bernard Herrmann    USA
5    Nino Rota    ITALY
6    Tōru Takemitsu    JAPAN
7    Michel Legrand    FRANCE
8    Alan Menken    USA
9    Ilayaraja    INDIA
10    Jerry Goldsmith    USA
11    Maurice Jarre    FRANCE
12    John Barry    USA
13    Hans Zimmer    GERMANY
14    Joe Hisaishi    JAPAN
15    James Horner    USA
16    Georges Delerue    USA
17    Dimitri Tiomkin    UK
18    Elmer Bernstein    USA
19    Howard Shore    CANADA
20    Thomas Newman    USA
21    Danny Elfman    USA
22    Philip Glass    USA
23    James Newton-Howard    USA
24    Vangelis    GREECE
25    Alan Silvestri    USA