Composer
Asif Illyas is an ECMA award-winning veteran of the Canadian music scene, based on the Atlantic Coast in Halifax, Nova Scotia and currently spends most of his time creating music for film and television. His career spans over 25 years, where he fronted Canadian progressive-pop outfit and EastWest/Warner Europe recording artists, MIR, touring four continents and producing four critically-acclaimed albums. He also was guitarist for Cutting Crew, during a portion of lead singer Nick Van Eede’s solo career during the late 1990s. He has appeared on albums with Sting, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, and performed on stage with Australia’s Colin Hay of Men At Work, Paula Cole, and many others. He has composed and arranged for many orchestral charts for symphonies such as VSO, WSO and SNS across the country in their Pops series. He was also assistant to the musical direction for David Foster’s touring All-Star show, working for artists BabyFace, Lionel Ritchie, Natalie Cole, and Nathan East.
Currently, his work is in dramatic and documentary score production. He has written award-winning scores for feature films such as TIFF and CSA Winner, “Weirdos”, 2018 breakthrough Horror epic, “The Child Remains”, Cannes-Winner “Blackbird”, and National Film Board’s award-winning documentary, “The Chocolate Farmer” and other hit-documentaries such as “Sickboy”, HBO’s “Fanarchy”, “Bounty – Into The Hurricane”, “Forever Young”, among many others.