Reena Esmail

Reena Esmail was born on February 11th, 1983 in Chicago, Illinois to Indian-American parents. She began composing in 1999, and performed extensively. As a teenager, Esmail had the opportunity to play Mendelssohn's Piano Trio alongside members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic after winning a competition that changed her life. She later attended the Juilliard School, graduating with a Bachelor in Music degree in 2005. She received three further degrees from the Yale School of Music at Yale University. Primary instructors at Juilliard and Yale included composers Susan Botti, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis, Christopher Rouse, and Samuel Adler. She additionally studied Hindustani music under Srimati Lakshmi Shankar and Gaurav Mazumdar. She continues to study under Saili Oak, who is also a frequent collaborator. She received her doctorate from Yale with her thesis, Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians. Esmail has been the composer-in-residence with the Seattle Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Tanglewood Music Center, Spoleto Festival, and Marlboro Music Festival. Notable ensembles that have commissioned work from Esmail have included the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Kronos Quartet, Imani Winds, Viano Quartet, Baltimore Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Albany Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Girls Choir, Conspirare, Brooklyn Rider, and Yale Institute of Sacred Music. She is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that connects Indian musical tradition with the West. ==Style==

Esmail only began to become a "truly syncretic composer" when she received a Fulbright-Nehru Scholarship to North India to study Hindustani musical tradition. After returning from a year in India, Esmail's goal became to bridge the gap between Indian and Western music. She wrote Tasveer as her debut composition, beginning to "scratch the surface of the ideas and concepts that now form the backbone of the music". This was her first attempt at creating music that captured the essence and ornamentation of Hindustani music. Esmail continued to explore these Eastern influences in pieces like her String Quartet (Ragamala). Every movement starts with a soft drone, mimicking the audience humming Esmail heard at performances she attended during her year in India when each raag was introduced. These drones are meant to evoke the close bond between the audience and the performer. Influences Esmail often cites Ravel as a major source of influence. She discovered that she could better comprehend Hindustani music by using the color, texture, and freedom of 19th-century French music, which drew her in as a piano student. Esmail writes, "My life was completely transformed when I heard Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for the first time. At the age of fourteen, I was sitting under the stars with my parents at the stunning Ford Theater in Los Angeles on a summer night. I could relate to the child's voice narrating the piece's text because I was so aware of the vast, complicated world I was witnessing, even through my young eyes. I'm just attempting to analyze everything. I can identify that particular performance as a turning point in my decision to pursue a career in music. All I wanted was to be able to produce such beauty." Esmail achieved one of her early musical goals when she composed her Piano Trio in 2019. Each of the trio's movements include genuine raags. A sensation of improvisational freedom and timelessness is created by the slow movement's continuous flutters, slides, and harmonics. The third movement Scherzo is reminiscent of Shostakovich's comedy and Mendelssohn's elfin characteristics. Combining these western influences with Indian traditional elements, Esmail has developed her own unique musical vocabulary. Her commitment to blending traditions is emphasized in her piece Khirkiyaan: Three Transformations for Brass Quintet. Named for the Hindi word for "windows", Esmail uses this brass quintet as three "windows" into her pieces of music. Every movement reimagines a previous work by Esmail for a brass quintet. The opening movement, Jog, is from her string quartet Ragamala. Her song cycle for guitar and mezzo soprano serves as the basis for the second movement, Joota. The third movement, Tuttarana, was first composed for a female choir. The Italian tutti and tarana, a Hindi composition that might be best rendered as the jazz phrase "scat," is the origin of this final title. Collaborators ==Works==

Esmail composes for orchestra, solo instrument, chamber ensemble, and voice. Works include Barso Re (2010) for Yale Sur et Veritaal, Yale's Hindi a cappella organization. Solo • Chardonnay, for solo flute (2001) • Take What You Need, for unaccompanied violin (2016) • Hallelujah (arr. of Leonard Cohen), unaccompanied violin (2017) • Darshan, unaccompanied violin (2018-2020) • Drishti (द्रिष्ती), miniatures for unaccompanied violin (2021) Chamber Works • Piano Quintet, for two violins, viola, cello, and piano (2010) • Tasveer, for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2012) • Jhula Jhule, for violin and piano (2013) • String Quartet (Ragamala), for two violins, viola, and cello (2013) • I Wonder as I Wander, for piano, violin, and cello (2014) • Nadiya, version for violin and bassoon (2016) • Saans (Breath), for violin, cello, and piano (2017) • The Light is the Same, for woodwind quintet (flute + piccolo, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon) or piano trio (piano, flute, oboe) (2017) • Khirkiyaan: Three Transformations for Brass Quintet, for two trumpets, horn, trombone, and tuba (2017) • Blaze, for violin and tabla (2019) • Piano Trio, for violin, cello, and piano (2019) • ''Meri Sakhi Ki Awaaz (My Sister's Voice)'' for soprano voice, Hindustani vocalist, piano, two violins, viola, cello • The History of Red, for mezzo soprano voice, piano, violin, and cello (2020) • Interglow, for string quartet, flute, piano, and community voices (2020) • Dhire, Dhire, for piano, violin, cello, and soprano voice (2022) Orchestral & Choral Works • Concerto for You, solo violin and youth string orchestra (2019) • Terra Infirma, harp, percussion (2025) Written for Yolanda Kondonassis and the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra • Double Concerto, violin, piano, and orchestra (2026) Written for Gil Shaham, Orli Shaham, and the National Symphony Orchestra ==Honors and awards==

• United States Artist Fellow in Music 2019 • S&R Foundation Washington Award Grand Prize 2019 • Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Citizen Artist Fellow 2017-2018 • Two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (2002, 2007) • Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2012 • INK Fellow 2011 • Winner in the MTAC-WLA Chamber Music Competition for piano performance • Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Scholar 2011-2012 Residencies ==Other Work==

Nonprofit Work Talks Interviews Academic Work ==References==