He is the founder of indie label Fang Records, and has produced hundreds of live events in downtown New York City.
Throughout the 1990s, he studied Hindustani classical singing and sitar in Varanasi, India, forging a world-orchestral-pop style.
The Village Voice has noted that “Chris Rael has consistently blended rock and Indian music better than any Western guitar guy, ever.”[1] He produced Najma Akhtar's 1996 album, Forbidden Kiss.
In 2005, he received the Outstanding Soundtrack Award, out of a field of 230 film composers, at the Outfest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Los Angeles, for the Lower East Side Biography Project's Queer Realities and Cultural Amnesia.
[3] He wrote and composed Araby, a musical based on James Joyce’s Dubliners, which has been performed at Dixon Place in New York City.