Reena Esmail

Esmail only began to become a "truly syncretic composer" when she received a Fulbright-Nehru Scholarship to North India to study the 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.

Esmail often cites the French composer Maurice Ravel as a major influence. She discovered that she could better comprehend Hindustani music by using the color, texture, and freedom of 19th-century French classical music, which had drawn her in as a piano student. Esmail has written: 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.

• 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