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 life and music was profiled on Season 3 of PBS Great Performances series Now Hear This, as well as Frame of Mind, a podcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Esmail divides her attention evenly between orchestral, chamber and choral work. She has written commissions for ensembles including the Los Angeles Master Chorale,  Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Kronos Quartet, and her music has featured on multiple Grammy-nominated albums, including The Singing Guitar by Conspirare, BRUITS by Imani Winds, and Healing Modes by Brooklyn Rider. Many of her choral works are published by Oxford University Press.

Esmail is the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 2020-2025 Swan Family Artist in Residence, and was Seattle Symphony’s 2020-21 Composer-in-Residence. She also holds awards/fellowships from United States Artists, the S&R Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Kennedy Center.

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, 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 Mazumdar, 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 her hometown of Los Angeles, California.

Aaditya Hingoo is a passionate student of North Indian classical music and has been learning from Mr. Tushar Bhatia, a pioneering composer and musician based in Mumbai. He has been learning vocals for more than a decade and is adept at multiple Hindustani genres in the Agra style including Dhrupad, Dhamar, and Khayal, Thumri, Tarana, and more. Aaditya also plays the sitar and its rarer counterpart, the surbahar.

Throughout high school and college, Aaditya has been an active participant in various ensembles and performed on multiple stages. He is currently a member of Aarohi, Georgia Tech’s organization for Indian classical arts, where he plays a role in coordinating events to foster engagement within the vibrant music community in Atlanta.

Aaditya is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and is on EcoCAR, one of the automotive engineering teams at the SCC. In free time, he enjoys cooking, hiking, and spending time with friends and family.

American soprano Amanda Sheriff is currently a Glynn Studio Artist at Atlanta Opera. In 2024, she will make her role debut as Musetta (La Bohéme) at Intermountain Opera Bozeman and return to the Glimmerglass Festival to perform Satirino/L’Eternita (La Calisto) Amanda will make her Opera Philadelphia debut as Jess (The Listeners).

In 2023 Amanda was a finalist for the Ryan Center and joined the Glynn Studio program. Sheriff was a Young Artist at the Glimmerglass Festival and premiered the role Calista (Rip Van Winkles).

In 2022, Sheriff was awarded first prize in the Lotte Lenya Competition and returned to Opera Delaware as Despina (Così fan tutte) and also rejoined Opera Baltimore as Miss Jessel (Turn of the Screw).

During 2021, Amanda joined Des Moines Metro Opera as an Apprentice Artist and made her debut as Miss Lightfoot (Fellow Travelers). Amanda was also a Studio Artist at Florida Grand Opera, and performed the roles of Beatrice (Three Decembers),1st Trio member (Trouble in Tahiti) and Célie (Signor Deluso). Amanda performed Norina (Don Pasquale) with Opera Delaware and Monica (The Medium) with Opera Baltimore.

Sheriff was a Young Artist at Seagle in 2019 and performed Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro).