Rajna Swaminathan - Part 6

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 170: Rajna Swaminathan - Part 6

In this week’s episode, we talk to Rajna Swaminathan about her compositional process with specific projects, as well as her experiences at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Rajna Swaminathan, check her out here: https://www.rajnaswaminathan.com/. This episode was originally recorded in January 2024.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano),  as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/17691934

Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes

Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Yoyo Hung-Yu Lin

Chapters

• 0:22 In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Rajna Swaminathan, who we spoke to in January 2024.
• 0:30 You spoke earlier about some forms being more open than others. It made me curious what you meant in terms of open forms. I may be being naive here, and it's something very obvious.
• 4:19 You talked about being at the GLFCAM - Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Talk about that experience a little bit, if you'd like.

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Rajna Swaminathan, who we spoke to in January 2024. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

Nanette McGuinness  00:30

You spoke earlier about some forms being more open than others. It made me curious what you meant in terms of open forms. I may be being naive here, and it's something very obvious.

Rajna Swaminathan  00:42

No, it's not. So, for instance, there was this piece that was commissioned by the LA Phil for their Green Umbrella series a few years ago, and it ended up getting postponed due to the pandemic. It only got premiered in 2022 by Jacaranda. And that piece ends with a text score. So it slowly comes out of notated form in a gradual way. So it's quite, you know, through-notated with elements of improvisation in between and slowly gets to a point where the, you know, everything's in independent tempi, and it's, it's more about creating a collage of phrases. And then slowly, everybody's invited to move away from their instruments and only use their voices, which is an element throughout the piece. And actually, today there's a new version of it being premiered by Brightwork in LA. So excited to hear that. 

Nanette McGuinness  01:52

Nice, yeah! 

Rajna Swaminathan  01:53

But yeah, there's a kind of optional voice part throughout, so anybody can sing while they're playing, and there's some pitches that they can sing. So there's, there's a way that this whole piece just kind of allows itself to become a reference point for its ending. So I that's kind of what the the end of the piece specifies, is allow these resonances to kind of continue through your voice, through your memory, and allow this ending to just come together spontaneously. 

Nanette McGuinness  02:27

Nice. 

Rajna Swaminathan  02:28

Or it's, well, it worked well during the premiere, I should say. [laughs] 

Nanette McGuinness  02:34

[laughs] 

Rajna Swaminathan  02:34

I'll hear another version of it tonight, so, yeah, I'll let you know that goes! [laughs] But, but, you know, it's, that's what I mean, I guess, is that that is a completely open ending where I'm not really even specifying duration. I'm just saying you're going to carry it, carry the end with your voice, and extend what you just heard, what you just played, but find a collective ending together in your voices. And so that's, that's an example, maybe, of like, the most open it can go. But it's, you know, it's, I think it's still within the realm of what people encounter. I don't, maybe not the more like, you know, rigid classical side of things. But, you know, Pauline Oliveros has had text scores. There's been other I'm sure people have been exposed to that.

Nanette McGuinness  03:26

I certainly have, yes. [laughs]

Rajna Swaminathan  03:29

It's open, right? It's improvised. 

Nanette McGuinness  03:31

Yeah. 

Rajna Swaminathan  03:31

So I like finding ways to combine those things, because then it allows it to feel like, "Okay, well, I don't need to tell you what to do." I don't even need to give you these boundaries, but I can just tell you to trust that you have enough musicality and rapport with the other musicians that you can find a way to end this piece together with your voices and to lean on that that shared language or that shared kind of experience of having gone through the piece. But yeah, I guess that's what I mean by degrees of openness.

Nanette McGuinness  04:06

That was very interesting, and it wasn't what I expected by your saying open form. So thank you. That's very interesting.

Rajna Swaminathan  04:18

mmhmm

Nanette McGuinness  04:19

I want to go back... you talked about being at the GLFCAM - Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Talk about that experience a little bit, if you'd like.

Rajna Swaminathan  04:27

Yeah, that was really wonderful. It was. I was really early in my process of writing through-composed music. I had actually really, not really written a piece that was through-composed like that. And my younger sibling, Anjna, was the one who had gone through that program first and recommended me, and they had a lot to say about Gabriela and just how wonderful the experience was. And they had also worked with Del Sol String Quartet, and encouraged me to, you know, to do this. And I also really enjoyed my time...I also worked with Del Sol, and maybe I'm jumping the gun a little bit here for one of your other questions, but...

Nanette McGuinness  05:09

[laughs] Yes, you're right there.

Rajna Swaminathan  05:10

[laughs] I...for that piece, which was my first string quartet. I transcribed fragments of a piano improvisation that I had done, maybe like the year prior, or something, or like a few months before, something that really resonated with me and that I had been listening back to quite a bit. And yeah, that was the first piece that I finished, at least, I should say, or maybe I didn't finish that first one of those, the LA Phil piece, or that one was around the same time. But the experience of working with Gabriela and meeting other composers was really wonderful. And everybody came from, like different paths and different approaches. And it was, it's just nice to have a community of composers to be in conversation with. And I think over time, you know, I ended up meeting with people or, you know, it's a way of connecting. Also, I noticed that, you know, as you connected with me, there's been other composers or organizations that are like, "Oh, I know you through this GLFCAM thing," and so it's been a nice way of connecting with others. And I've tried to bring friends of mine into that community as well by recommending them for the readings. And so it's a nice community. And I also was involved with composing Earth Initiative the past couple of years. It was, which was also, it was also it was a different kind of experience. Obviously, it was, we weren't talking so much directly about music, but more about our role as artists in the face of climate change. 

Nanette McGuinness  06:52

Right. 

Rajna Swaminathan  06:52

So I've enjoyed just the potential of that community and all the different ways that that can manifest, both through, you know, just, you know, having friends and a sense of community, but also, you know, professional opportunities, also just resources on on how to think about what we do as artists and our responsibilities in this, this larger question that everybody's facing together around the climate crisis. 

Nanette McGuinness  07:20

Yeah. 

Rajna Swaminathan  07:20

So yeah, it's been, it's been wonderful to to have that.

Nanette McGuinness  07:26

Yeah, it does seem like a very powerful gathering institution, I guess, if institution is even right, so, community is probably the better word. 

Nanette McGuinness  07:35

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Rajna Swaminathan, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media, and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week, "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]