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Reena Esmail
Clarinet Concerto

"The first time I saw one of Shankar Tucker’s videos on YouTube, almost five years ago, I knew I wanted to write him this concerto. I didn’t know him back then: I was just one of his millions of fans from around the world, who was so deeply moved to see a musician who blended these two traditions with such incredible imagination.

Five years after I first saw that video, this project finally found a home with Albany Symphony.

Shankar is a unique performer: he has trained extensively in both Western and Hindustani classical music – both at New England Conservatory in Boston, and with a great master of Hindustani music, Hariprasad Chaurasia in India. In writing this piece, I found that so many doors were open to me that had never been open at the same time: I could notate a simple melody that he could then ornament or vary. I could ask him to improvise in a raag. I could ask him to read notation off a page, in changing time signatures. I could write in a complex western form because he could easily follow what was on the page. There are very few musicians in the world who are able to do all of these things, and even fewer who are able to do them with the grace, fluidity and soul of Shankar Tucker.

Hindustani music is an aural tradition: the nuance of a phrase is picked up through call and response, by hearing and repeating. In both movements of this concerto, the melodies that start in the clarinet eventually find their way into the orchestra. Many of these melodies came from Shankar’s own improvisations — we worked together on this piece at the conceptual level and found material we both loved. The aural transfer of these melodies to the western musicians is embedded in the piece itself, and the exchange of musical cultures is taking place in real time, before your ears."

~ Reena Esmail