Reena Esmail (born 1983)
Reena Esmail is an Indian-American composer born in Chicago and currently living in Los Angeles. She holds degrees from Juilliard and the Yale School of Music, and she has studied Hindustani music in India. Her website states that she “works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces.”
The gorgeous Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz (My Sister’s Voice) epitomizes one of Reena Esmail’s approaches to the melding of these worlds. This is a 2018 composition for Hindustani vocalist and soprano and instrumental accompaniment that exists in three versions. This video is the version for accompaniment by piano quintet:
Reena Esmail writes:
Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz, at its core, is a piece about sisterhood. Each movement’s short text epitomizes the one of the many facets of having and being a sister. It is also about what sisterhood looks like when expanded beyond a single family or a single culture— when two women, from two different musical cultures create space for one another’s voices to be heard.
The first movement begins with a recording of the famous Flower Duet from Delibe’s opera Lakme, but then as it might be sung by a Hindustani singer rather than the orientalist conception of Indian women from 1880’s France. The second movement is a classical Hindustani bandish with the singers singing in two different raags. The third movement also uses two different raags that are opposites of each other. At the end of the video, the composer appears in front of the stage.
This is her lovely Piano Trio from 2019: