Ravinia 2025 Issue 4

PAVILION 8:00 PM FRIDAY, JULY 25, 2025 CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MARIN ALSOP, co-curator and conductor MOLLY YEH, co-curator ALEXANDRA ARRIECHE, guest conductor † VADIM KARPINOS, percussion ED HARRISON, percussion Introduction by Chef Maneet Chauhan ESMAIL RE | Member ** Alexandra Arrieche Introduction by Chef Jacqueline Eng CORPUS Third Movement of The Great Lake Concerto ** Vadim Karpinos; Ed Harrison Introduction by Chef Mika Leon GERSHWIN Cuban Overture –Intermission– Introduction by Chef Sarah Grueneberg RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Sheherazade , Symphonic Suite, op. 35 The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship The Story of the Kalender Prince The Young Prince and the Young Princess Festival at Baghdad—The Sea—The Ship Goes to Pieces on a Rock Surmounted by a Bronze Warrior—Conclusion † Ravinia debut ** First performance by the CSO and at Ravinia Tonight’s concert is performed in honor of Nancy Zadek, from Craig & Linda Umans . Ravinia expresses its appreciation for the generous support of Sponsor Ellen Rudnick & Paul Earle . REENA ESMAIL (b. 1983) RE|Member Scored for three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and video-recording/offstage solo oboe, three clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, triangle, temple blocks, marimba, chimes, glockenspiel, and strings Reena Esmail engages music as a unifying force, creating new communities through her compositions and building bridges between her own Indian and Western cultural heritages. Born in Chicago and raised in Los Angeles, Es- mail grew up completely immersed in the study of Western classical music, beginning pi- ano lessons at age 11 and eventually enrolling in the prestigious Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. She studied composition as an undergraduate at The Juilliard School and received both master’s and doctoral degrees in composition from Yale University. The child of a Portuguese-Indian mother and Indian-Pakistani father, Esmail nonetheless de- veloped her appreciation of Indian music later in life, when she “realized that [Western classi- cal music] was starting to separate me from my own culture.” Yale hired a new professor of Indian classical music, who invited Esmail to a concert of Hindustani music at the Metropolitan Muse- um of Art featuring violinist Daniel Hope and sitar player Gaurav Mazumdar. Inspired by this musical encounter, Esmail subsequently applied for and received a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in India—in 2011/12, between her graduate degrees—with Mazumdar and Sri- mati Lakshmi Shankar. This period of discovery left a permanent imprint on her compositions and influenced the subject of her doctoral disser- tation, “Finding Common Ground: Uniting Prac- tices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians.” Esmail has completed residencies with the Street Symphony (2016–18), Seattle Symphony (2020– 23), Tanglewood Music Center (2023), Spoleto Festival (2024), and Los Angeles Master Chorale (2024–25). She has received awards and fellow- ships from the American Academy of Arts and Reena Esmail RAVINIAMAGAZINE • JULY 21 – AUG. 3, 2025 58