I returned recently from my first trip to the country of my father’s birth, India. He was born in the lesser-known region of Coorg in the southwest part of the country. It is a land of coffee plantations and elephants, and a warrior caste, the Kodavas, who are known for their deep connection to nature…and weapons. My friends tell me they are unsurprised that I come from a line of warriors.

Coorg is in the Indian state of Karnataka. Though I know shamefully little about classical Indian music, the term Carnatic music was somewhere in my brain. Dr. Google confirmed that the state of Karnataka did in fact lend its name to one of two main branches of Indian classical music. Carnatic (southern India) and Hindustani (northern India) music began diverging onto their separate paths in the 12th century, but they share the two main elements of  rāga (sometimes written as raag) modes or melodies, and  the rhythmic cycles called tāḷa.

Karnataka has many temples, and it’s possible my husband and I saw most of them. Every guide seemed intent on teaching us about Hinduism, the gods and their many symbols, which are celebrated in the richly decorated stone temples that date to as early as the 8th century. I confess that I was afraid there would be a quiz after each temple visit and I would fail miserably. So many gods, so many accompanying tools and vehicles, so many stories. What came through, however, was the androgynous forms that each god would take, and the seeming equality of male and female, all governed by Brahman, a genderless metaphysical concept that was described as a “womb” to us by several of our guides.

All of which led me, upon my return, to the music of Indian American composer Reena Esmail. She was born to Indian parents in 1983 and continues to live in her hometown of Los Angeles. She studied the traditions of Hindustani music as a Fulbright-Nehru scholar in 2011-12 and is a graduate of Juilliard and Yale. I was introduced to her music several years ago by my daughter but didn’t know about the trove of chamber music in her output until I did a little more digging recently.

As a teenager, Esmail won a life-changing competition which led to playing Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She names Ravel’s Piano Trio as a favorite, and notes: “So much of what I’ve learned about color and texture in my writing comes from Ravel.” As a piano student Esmail had been attracted to the color, texture, and freedom of 19th century French music, and found that she used this lens to more fully understand Hindustani music.

It was in her 2010 Piano Quintet that she began incorporating elements of Hindustani classical music into her work for the first time. As she writes:

My path to Hindustani classical music was circuitous: at the point I wrote this piece, I had been yearning for years to understand the music of my own culture, but I hadn’t quite found my way in. It wasn’t until my mid-20s, and (surprisingly) during my Masters program at Yale School of Music, that I truly began to engage in a thorough study of the music from my own culture. The minute I felt my voice make that  first little gamak [an ornamentation technique in Indian classical music] something opened in me, and I knew I had no other choice but to continue peering intently down that path… This piece is the first step of what became, from that moment forward, a lifelong journey into the space between these two cultures that define me.

Esmail’s own website gives you a complete listing of her works and other information about the composer. I’ve named here some of her compositions for chamber ensembles which especially drew me in and cause me to now eagerly seek opportunities to hear and play her music.

Piano Quintet, 2010

Two Violins, Viola, Cello, Piano
Duration: 13′, one movement
Score available in digital or print form
Recording

String Quartet (Ragamala), 2013

Two violins, Viola, Cello
Duration: 19′, four movements
Score available in digital and print formats
(Note: there are several different versions of this work, including one for string quartet and Hindustani vocalist)
Performance

Each movement begins with a quiet drone, imitating the humming that Esmail heard from audiences when a raag was introduced at concerts she attended during her year in India. To her, these drones suggest a deeper connection between audience and performer.

Tasveer, 2012

Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Piano
Duration: 5′
Score
Performance

Tasveer was the first piece Esmail composed after returning from her year in India. She sees this work as the place where she “began to scratch the surface of the ideas and concepts that now form the backbone of the music” she composes. “Hindustani ornamentation is so beautiful and ephemeral, and this was one of my first attempts to capture these little wisps of sound on the page,” she writes.

Dhire, Dhire, 2022

Piano, Violin, Cello, Soprano
Duration: 5′
Score available in digital and print formats
Performance

Esmail has composed this with specifically young musicians in mind, knowing that some of the music (like books) we encounter when we’re young shapes us and stays with us for the rest of our lives. There is also a version for Cello, Piano, and Contralto.

Saans (Breath), 2017

Violin, Cello, Piano
Duration: 8′
Score available in digital and print formats
Performance

A reworking of the slow movement of Esmail’s Clarinet Concerto

Piano Trio, 2019

Violin, Cello, Piano
Duration: 31′, four movements
Score
Performance

Esmail has said that composing a piano trio fulfilled one of her earliest musical ambitions. Authentic raags appear in each movement of the trio. Flutters, slides and harmonics continue in the slow movement, creating a sense of improvisatory freedom and timelessness. The third movement scherzo recalls Mendelssohn’s elfin qualities and Shostakovich’s humor.  But Esmail’s musical language is all her own.

I Wonder as I Wander, 2014

Piano, Violin, Cello
Duration: 4′
Score available in digital and print formats
Performance

The Appalachian Christmas carol with a little flavor of Indian classical music in the ornamentation. A score for the string quartet version is in preparation.

The History of Red, 2020

Mezzo-Soprano, Piano, Violin, Cello
Duration: 20′
Score available in digital and print formats
Performance

Esmail writes: The first time I heard Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, it changed my life. I was fourteen years old, and as I sat under the stars at the beautiful Ford Theater on a summer night in in Los Angeles with my parents, I completely identified with the voice of the child who narrates the text of the piece – so aware of the huge, complex world that I was seeing, even through young eyes. Just trying to parse it all. I can pinpoint that one performance as a pivotal moment in my decision to be a musician. I just wanted to be someone who could create that kind of beauty.

The History of Red was originally written for soprano and chamber orchestra (like Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915) It’s text by Linda Hogan speaks of a woman grappling with the world around her, and her own complex history.

Interglow, 2020

String Quartet, Flute, Piano, Community Voices
Duration: 5-7′
Score – digital only
Performance

From Esmail’s notes: “This piece is designed for engagement. It requires performers to sing a few notes, and also for the audience to sing. The first section is a call and response between performers, where the audience can participate. The second section requires learning a short melody.

The Light is the Same, 2017

This work exists in two versions:

Woodwind Quintet: Flute (+piccolo), Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon (Score)
Trio: Flute, Oboe, Piano (Score)
Duration: 11-12′
Performance: (Quintet version)
Performance: (Trio version)

Esmail mined her own 2016 oratorio, This Love Between Us: Prayers for Unity, and the wisdom of Sufi mystic poet Rumi for inspiration for these two chamber music versions.

The Light is the Same.

Religions are many
But God is one
The lamps may be different
But the Light is the same   – Rumi, 13th c.

Khirkiyan: Three Transformations for Brass Quintet, 2017

Brass Quintet: two trumpets, horn, trombone, tuba
Score available in digital and print formats
Performance (third movement)
Duration: 11′, three movements

Khirkiyaan  is the Hindi word for “windows,”  and Esmail describes this brass quintet as three ‘windows’ into her music. Each movement takes an earlier work by Esmail and reimagines it for brass quintet. The first movement is titled Jog, and is taken from her string quartet, Ragamala. The second movement, Joota, is based on her song cycle for guitar and mezzo soprano. Tuttarana, the third movement, was originally written for women’s choir. This last title is formed from the Italian tutti and tarana, a Hindi work that might best be translated as the jazz term “scat.”

Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz (My Sister’s Voice), 2019

Piano Quintet and vocals: Soprano, Hindustani vocalist, Piano, Two Violins, Viola, Cello
Duration: 22′, three movements
Score available in digital and print formats
Performance

Esmail writes: At its core, this is a piece about sisterhood. Each movement’s short text epitomizes 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. 

Don’t be surprised by the opening recording of Delibes’s famous Flower Duet from his opera Lakme. Actually, do be surprised. Be very surprised at how the entrance of the Hindustani vocalist is momentarily jarring before becoming essential to the dialogue between old and new, east and west.  If you have time for nothing else, listen to this piece and allow it to cast its spell upon you. You may find, like me, that it draws you into Esmail’s orbit, an orbit you won’t want to soon leave.

“I wish I could live in India and America at the same time,” says Reena Esmail. “I wish they shared a border, and I could build a little home right in between them. I know I can’t do that in the physical world, but this is where I live every day in my music.” 

As someone who can look back on my own life and see all the small ways I too lived on the border of east and west, finding music that speaks to the home I have found in between has been moving. I hope you find something in Esmail’s music that transports you as well across that bridge from west to east.