Indian-American Reena Esmail (born 1983; Chicago) ranks among the most widely-performed composers of her generation. Currently the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s Swan Family Artist-in-Residence, she was composer-in-residence for the Seattle Symphony and Street Symphony of Los Angeles. Most prominent among her many awards are the $50,000 United States Artist Fellow and the Grand Prize Winner of the S & R Foundation’s Washington Award. Esmail is artistic director of Shastra, a non-profit promoting cross-cultural music connecting traditions of India and the West.
A graduate of Juilliard and Yale who studied Hindustani music in India, Dr. Esmail strives to bring communities together by creating equitable musical spaces in her compositions. This is evident in most of her works, including Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz (My Sister’s Voice) (2018-19) for Hindustani singer, soprano, and orchestra or piano quintet. Among her common techniques for merging idioms are utilizing Hindustani raags, rhythmic cycles, and structures alongside Western modulations, orchestrations, and mirror-image phrases.
Leo Delibes’ “Flower Duet” from Lakmé (1881-82), a popular 19th-century “orientalist” opera, served as inspiration for Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz. Esmail’s 20-minute piece (in Hindi and English) is about expanded sisterhood, when two women from different musical cultures allow each other’s voices to be heard. Esmail achieves this by allowing each singer to switch languages and solfege systems (Indian and Western) during their virtuosic jugalbandi (Hindustani musical competition).
This paper details Esmail’s numerous techniques in achieving this musical amalgamation. Extracts from the author’s interviews with Esmail and excerpts from live performances will be included.