Sun Colors

Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces. 

Esmail’s work has been commissioned by ensembles including the Los Angeles Master Chorale,  Kronos Quartet, Imani Winds, Richmond Symphony, Town Music Seattle,  Albany Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta,  River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Girls Chorus, The Elora Festival, Juilliard415, and Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Upcoming seasons include new work for Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Amherst College Choir and Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, and Conspirare.

Esmail is the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 2020-2023 Swan Family Artist in Residence, and Seattle Symphony’s 2020-21 Composer-in-Residence.  Previously, she was named a 2019 United States Artist Fellow in Music, and the 2019 Grand Prize Winner of the S & R Foundation’s Washington Award.  Esmail was also a 2017-18 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow. She was the 2012 Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (and subsequent publication of a work by C.F. Peters)

Esmail holds degrees in composition from The Juilliard School (BM’05) and the Yale School of Music (MM’11, MMA’14, DMA’18). Her primary teachers have included Susan Botti, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis and Martin Bresnick, Christopher Rouse and Samuel Adler. She received a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in India. Her Hindustani music teachers include Srimati Lakshmi Shankar and Gaurav Mazundar, and she currently studies and collaborates with Saili Oak. Her doctoral thesis, entitled Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians explores the methods and challenges of the collaborative process between Hindustani musicians and Western composers.

Esmail was Composer-in-Residence for Street Symphony (2016-18) and is currently an Artistic Director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that promotes cross-cultural music connecting music traditions of India and the West.

She currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

-Reena Esmail 

This piece was commissioned by Vijay Gupta. It was first premiered (in its first iteration) with Taos New Music Group in Taos, New Mexico on September 22, 2018. Darshan means ‘seeing’ in Hindi. In the Hindu religion, to give ‘darshan’ is to see and worship God. As Vijay Gupta and I worked on this music together over three years, we began to see the divine in one another.

This movement, in Raag Charukeshi, is the first movement of five, which will be written over a span of five years. It explores grief, in its many facets and forms.

No specific Hindustani technique is required for the performance of this piece — Western-trained violinists can certainly find everything they need on the page.

However, performers can gain further context by:

• Listening to performances of Raag Charukeshi (I find it equally useful to listen to longer performances on YouTube/Spotify as well as very short clips by typing #charukeshi into instagram)

• Becoming familiar with the sound of the sarangi (bowed string instrument commonly used in Hindustani tradition — wonderful players include Pankaj Mishra and Ram Narayan)

• Listening to the music of Kala Ramnath, an incredible Hindustani classical violinist.

Composer and pianist Michael Djupstrom's work captured first prizes in the international composition competitions of the UK’s Delius Society, the American Viola Society, the Chinese Fine Arts Society, and has received awards from prominent institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Charles Ives Fellowship, Charles Ives Scholarship), Pew Center for Arts & Heritage (Pew Fellowship), New Music USA, S&R Foundation (Grand Prize, Washington Awards), Meet the Composer, American Composers Forum, Music Teachers National Association, Académie musicale de Villecroze, and the Sigurd and Jarmila Rislov Foundation, among many others. In 2017, the MacDowell Colony awarded him one of its prestigious artist residencies for the composition of his String Quartet No. 2.

Recent commissions have come from the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, National Cherry Blossom Festival, Eugene Symphony Orchestra, Santa Rosa Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Great Falls Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Tanglewood Music Center, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program, Music From Angel Fire, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus, International Opera Theater, Lyra Society, Lotte Lehmann Foundation, and the Cavatina Duo, among others.

Djupstrom’s chamber music is presented regularly across the USA by ensembles including the Dover Quartet, Network for New Music, Dolce Suono, Lyric Fest, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Music from Copland House, Definiens Project, Sound Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Juventas, Sounds New, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and his works have been performed and broadcast in the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Romania, Austria, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Taiwan, China, and Japan. In recent seasons, his special interest in Romanian classical music led him to present at the 2017 George Enescu Festival of McGill University and to pursue advanced language study in summer 2019 with the assistance of a Romanian government scholarship; in November 2019, he presented a recital highlighting contemporary Romanian and American works at the annual Meridian Festival in Bucharest. A 2020 grant from the S&R Foundation aims to share this passion for Romanian music through the creation of a new concert series at the Hanifl Center for Performing Arts in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

As a pianist, Djupstrom has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia-based new music ensemble Relâche. His passion for chamber music has led to concerts for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music, the British Library, S&R Foundation, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Astral Artists, Yale University, and many other presenting organizations. His festival appearances include Hong Kong’s “Intimacy of Creativity,” Music From Angel Fire, Tanglewood, Brevard, and the Académie musicale de Villecroze; he has performed in major metropolitan cities throughout the world, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington DC, Houston, Atlanta, Hong Kong, Paris, London, Madrid, Bucharest, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Montréal, and Aix-en-Provence. He has recorded for American Public Media's popular "Performance Today" radio program, Radio Television Hong Kong's Radio 4, and the Equilibrium, American Modern, and Meyer Media labels.

As a music educator, Djupstrom has taught composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, theory and orchestration for Boston University, ear training for the University of Michigan, and piano at Settlement Music School. He has been a guest teacher and presenter at Rice University, Westminster Choir College, Montana State University, Rowan University, Shasta Community College, National University of Music of Bucharest, International School of Brussels, Paris Conservatory, and Yichao Music Training Center in Shenzhen, China.

Djupstrom received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan, where he studied with composers Bright Sheng, William Bolcom, Susan Botti, Karen Tanaka, and Eric Santos. Djupstrom pursued further studies in Paris with Betsy Jolas, whom he later worked for as assistant. He also holds an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he was a student of Jennifer Higdon and Richard Danielpour. He lives currently in Berlin, Germany.

Commissioned by Music from Angel Fire

Premiered Sept. 4, 2011 by Nikki Chooi, violin, and Natalie Helm, violoncello, Angel Fire Community Center, Angel Fire, NM

My favorite time of day is the late afternoon, when the sun's light turns golden and I often find my mind wandering in daydreams.  I decided to write a series of miniatures inspired by these thoughts – a set of small pieces of distinct and contrasting characters.  After finishing one of them, however, I realized that the turbulent nature of what I'd written seemed a little at odds with my original idea, and when the second piece also turned out darker than I'd anticipated, I decided to amend the title to reflect the dual nature of the work.

• I. A bold, declamatory movement with extensive canonic writing.

• II. A sprightly dance in which the violin and cello trade melodic and accompanimental roles.

• III. An introspective movement, full of quiet sadness.

• IV. Agitated, the most nightmarish of the set.

• V. Begins as a proper, elegant dance.  This mood gradually unravels, leading to an impassioned climax in the cello, and then recedes to a shadow of the initial material.

• VI. A wild, folk-inflected finale, full of highly virtuosic writing.

With playing that is “fierce and lyrical” and works that are “other-worldly” (The Strad) and “evocative” (New York Times), Jessica Meyer is a GRAMMY® – nominated violist and composer whose passionate musicianship radiates accessibility and emotional clarity. Her first composer/performer portrait album recently debuted at #1 on the Billboard traditional classical chart, where “knife-edge anticipation opens on to unexpected, often ecstatic musical realms, always with a personal touch and imaginatively written for the instruments” (Gramophone Magazine).

Meyer’s compositions viscerally explore the wide palette of emotionally expressive colors available to each instrument while using traditional and extended techniques inspired by her varied experiences as a contemporary and period instrumentalist. Since embarking on her composition career only six years ago, premieres have included performances by acclaimed vocal ensembles Roomful of Teeth and Vox Clamantis, the American Brass Quintet, cellist Amanda Gookin for her Forward Music Project, Sybarite 5, PUBLIQuartet, NOVUS NY of Trinity Wall Street, and a work for A Far Cry commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. As part of the residency, Ms. Meyer lived in the museum itself for a week to immerse herself in the creatively curated life and collected art of Mrs. Gardner to find inspiration for the work.

Her orchestral works have been performed by the North Carolina Symphony, the Nu Deco Ensemble in Miami, Charlotte Symphony, Vermont Symphony, Evansville Philharmonic, Sinfonia Gulf Coast, and the Studio Orchestra at Peabody Conservatory. Recently, she was just announced the winner of the 2nd Annual Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Composer’s Award, which will fund a commission for the Bangor Symphony in 2022-23. Upcoming orchestral engagements include performances by the Auburn Symphony, a concerto for herself with the League of Composers Orchestra to be premiered in Miller Theatre, and interactive performances in Carnegie Hall and around the country as part of their nationwide Link Up Program.

Recent chamber works include commissions by the Juilliard School for a project with the Historical Performance Program, and by the Lorelei Ensemble for a song cycle that received the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America. This season includes being Composer-in-Residence at Spoleto USA; a premiere at the National Gallery of Art; and works for the St. Lawrence String Quartet, flutist Allison Loggins-Hull for her “Diametrically Composed” project at National Sawdust, and for Sandbox Percussion with vocal duo Two Cities called “20 Minutes of Action” – which was awarded a commissioning grant from New Music USA. This work uses passages from Chanel Miller’s Victim Impact Statement and her powerful memoir to tell the story of the aftermath of being sexually attacked by Brock Turner at a Stanford University party. The text was then sequenced and arranged to express the stages of grief and acceptance established by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, and culminates in a final movement that mirrors the empowering work Chanel has done as an advocate for social change.

As a solo performer, Ms. Meyer uses a single simple loop pedal to create a virtuosic orchestral experience with her viola and voice. Drawing from wide-ranging influences which include Bach, Brahms, Delta blues, Flamenco, Indian Raga, and Appalachian fiddling, Meyer’s music takes audience members on a journey through joy, anxiety, anger, bliss, torment, loneliness and passion. Her solo shows have been featured at iconic venues such as BAMcafé, Joe’s Pub, and Symphony Space in NYC, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, in Paris at Sunset Sunside, in addition to venues in Singapore, Switzerland, Vietnam, the Emirates and beyond. At home with many different styles of music and an ardent collaborator, Jessica can regularly be seen performing on Baroque viola, improvising with jazz musicians, or collaborating with other composer-performers.

Ms. Meyer is equally known for her inspirational work as an educator, where she empowers musicians with networking, communication, teaching, and entrepreneurial skills so they can be the best advocates for their own careers. Her workshops have been featured at the Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute of Music, for the Teaching Artists of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Manhattan School of Music, the Longy School of Music, NYU, the Chamber Music America Conference, and at various universities around the country. Jessica has conducted hundreds of workshops for students and adults for Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Caramoor, the Little Orchestra Society, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Currently, she is most passionate about getting musicians of all ages off the page to activate their own creativity, improvise, and awaken their own inner composer – which in turn makes them better performers. In addition to teaching virtual workshops, her most recent engagements have been for the Moab Music Festival, the National Youth Orchestra of Carnegie Hall, and for the North Carolina Chamber Music Institute.

colors these instruments can make:

I only speak of the Sun
because the Sun is my Master
I worship even the dust at His feet.
I am not a night-lover and do not praise sleep
I am the messenger of the Sun!
Secretly I will ask Him and pass the answers to you.
Like the Sun I shine on those who are forsaken
I may look drunk and disheveled but I speak the Truth.
Tear off the mask, your face is glorious,
your heart may be cold as stone but
I will warm it with my raging fire.
No longer will I speak of sunsets or rising Moons,
I will bring you love’s wine
for I am born of the Sun
I am a King!

The world-renowned artist and UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador Tan Dun, has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. A winner of today’s most prestigious honors including the Grammy Award, Oscar/Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award, Bach Prize, Shostakovich Award, and most recently Italy’s Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, Tan Dun’s music has been played throughout the world by leading orchestras, opera houses, international festivals, and on radio and television. Most recently, Tan Dun was named as Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. As dean, Tan Dun will further demonstrate music’s extraordinary ability to transform lives and guide the Conservatory in fulfilling its mission of understanding music’s connection to history, art, culture, and society.

As a conductor of innovative programs around the world, Tan Dun has led the China tours of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. His current season includes leading the Orchestre National de Lyon in a six-city China tour, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra in a four-city tour of Switzerland and Belgium as well as engagements with the Rai National Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra where he was recently named Artistic Ambassador. Tan Dun currently serves as the Principle Guest Conductor of the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. In 2016, Tan Dun conducted the grand opening celebration of Disneyland Shanghai which was broadcast to a record-breaking audience worldwide. Tan Dun has led the world’s most esteemed orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Münchner Philharmoniker, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Tan Dun’s individual voice has been heard widely by international audiences. His first Internet Symphony, which was commissioned by Google/YouTube, has reached over 23 million people online. His Organic Music Trilogy of Water, Paper and Ceramic has frequented major concert halls and festivals. Paper Concerto was premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the opening of the Walt Disney Hall. His multimedia work, The Map, premiered by YoYo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has toured more than 30 countries worldwide. Its manuscript has been collected by the Carnegie Hall Composers Gallery. His Orchestral Theatre IV: The Gate was premiered by Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra and crosses the cultural boundaries of Peking Opera, Western Opera and puppet theatre traditions. Other important premieres include Four Secret Roads of Marco Polo for the Berlin Philharmonic, Piano Concerto “The Fire” for Lang Lang and the New York Philharmonic. In recent seasons, his percussion concerto, The Tears of Nature, for soloist Martin Grubinger premiered in 2012 with the NDR Symphony Orchestra and Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women Symphony for 13 Microfilms, Harp and Orchestra was co-commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. Most recently, Tan Dun conducted the premiere of his new oratorio epic Buddha Passion at the Dresden Festival with the Münchner Philharmoniker, the piece was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Dresden Festival and will go on to have performances in Melbourne, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Rome, Hamburg, Paris, Singapore and London in the coming seasons.

As a visual artist, Tan Dun’s work has been featured at the opening of the China Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. Other solo exhibitions include the New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Beijing’s Chambers Fine Art Gallery, and Shanghai Gallery of Art. Most recently, Tan Dun conducted The Juilliard Orchestra in the world premiere of his Symphony of Colors: Terracotta for the opening of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s epic exhibition The Age of Empires. 

As a global cultural leader, Tan Dun uses his creativity to raise awareness of environmental issues and to protect cultural diversity. In 2010, as “Cultural Ambassador to the World” for the World EXPO Shanghai, Tan Dun envisioned, curated and composed two special site-specific performances that perform year-round and have since become cultural representations of Shanghai: Peony Pavilion, a Chinese opera set in a Ming Dynasty garden and his Water Heavens string quartet which promotes water conservation and environmental awareness. Tan Dun was also commissioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to write the Logo Music and Award Ceremony Music for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Tan Dun currently serves as Honorary Chair of Carnegie Hall’s China Advisory Council, and has previously served as Creative Chair of the 2014 Philadelphia Orchestra China Tour, Associate Composer/Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony, and Artistic Director of the Festival Water Crossing Fire held at the Barbican Centre.

Tan Dun records for Sony Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Opus Arte, BIS and Naxos. His recordings have garnered many accolades, including a Grammy Award (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and nomination (The First Emperor; Marco Polo; Pipa Concerto), Japan’s Recording Academy Awards for Best Contemporary Music CD (Water Passion after St. Matthew) and the BBC’s Best Orchestral Album (Death and Fire). Tan Dun’s music is published by G. Schirmer, Inc. and represented worldwide by the Music Sales Group of Classical Companies.

Eight Colors for String Quartet was the first piece I wrote after coming to New York in 1986, It shares the dark, ritualized singing, very dramatic form, and attention to tone color and dynamic with my pieces written in China, such as On Taoism (for orchestra, voice, bass clarinet and contrabassoon), but still is very different from them. This string quartet (together with In Distance and Silk Road) marks the period of my first contact with the concentrated, lyrical language of western atonality. From it, I learned how to handle repetition, but otherwise responded in my own way, out of my own culture, not following the Second Vienna School . I drew on Chinese colors, on the techniques of Peking Opera – familiar to me since childhood. The work consists of eight very short sections, almost like a set of brush paintings, through which materials are shared and developed. The subjects are described by the eight interrelated titles, and form a drama, a kind of ritual performance structure. Not only timbre, but the actual string techniques are developed from Peking Opera; the vocalization of Opera actresses, and Buddhist chanting can be heard. Although a shadow of atonal pitch organization remains in some sections of this piece, I began to find a way to mingle old materials from my culture with the new, to contribute something to the western idea of atonality, and to refresh it. I found a danger in later atonal writing to be that it is too easy to leave yourself out of the music. I wanted to find ways to remain open to my culture, and open to myself.

–Tan Dun