Reena Esmail

Reena Esmail was born on February 11th, 1983 in Chicago, Illinois to Indian-American parents. She began composing in 1999, later attending the Juilliard School and 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 Hindustanti 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.^[7]

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

Esmail has been the composer-in-residence with the Seattle Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Tanglewood Music Center, Spoleto Festival, and Marlboro Music Festival.^[8]

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.^[9]

She is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that connects Indian musical tradition with the West.^[10]

• United States Artist Fellow in Music 2019^[1]
• S&R Foundation Washington Award Grand Prize 2019^[11]
• Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Citizen Artist Fellow 2017-2018^[12]
• Two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (2002, 2007)^[13]
• Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2012^[14]
• INK Fellow 2011^[15]
• Winner in the MTAC-WLA Chamber Music Competition for piano performance^[16]
• Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Scholar 2011-2012^[17]

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.^[18]