This vacation week, we’re bringing you two joyful tales from 2025.
Reena Esmail’s childhood in Los Angeles had two soundtracks: the Western classical music her mother and father liked, and the previous, scratchy Bollywood tapes her paternal grandparents would play time and again. These multicultural influences formed what would turn into the driving query of her work: how do you invite folks from totally different cultures onto the identical stage to construct a relationship and create music collectively? Composing is how Esmail has made her mark — by placing Western classical musicians in dialog with Indian artists, constructing bridges between violinists and sitar gamers, tabla drummers and western singers. She has additionally composed with unhoused singers from Skid Row, and her music has been carried out by main orchestras and choirs everywhere in the world. In Could, as a part of our sequence on California composers, host Sasha Khokha introduced us this profile of Esmail.
Artists are sometimes the folks in our communities who deliver folks collectively in methods which can be inventive, spontaneous, and stunning. That’s true within the East Bay neighborhood of Level Richmond, the place an area artist has created dozens of miniature fairy homes brimming with the persona of their imaginary inhabitants. On this story from April, Pauline Bartolone got down to discover these hidden treasures, and meet the one that created them.
