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 Nina Shekhar, who we spoke to in December 2023. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Your piece, "Redact", attempts to capture the way the human brain reacts to trauma. And you can skip this question if you want, but was there a specific event or person or something that inspired you to write it to go in that direction? How did the subject and approach affect your compositional process?
Nina Shekhar 00:52
There were a number of incidents that informed that that piece, you know, that piece I wrote 2019 was kind of reflecting after, you know, 2017 was like me too, like, kind of reflecting actually that and, you know, experiences I had, you know, without going into too much detail. But, um, I think I was thinking about that, and, you know, ideas of consent and things like that, related to the piece. But also, what ended up happening with that piece is some, you know, it was like a acoustic performance, you know, it was like a live thing performed with the ensemble. But, you know, I kind of had a sense from that, but it wasn't quite in its final form, like I knew, it needed to be in a different form. And I had a friend, who is, her name is Xuan, he was a really amazing video artist. And we had become really good friends about, you know, just related to her similar experiences, just as Asian Americans. And it's kind of right before 2020 and like, the pandemic, when a lot of Asian Americans were kind of experienced a lot of violence, you know, at that time, but, you know, we had talked about experiences that we had had before then she ended up making a video for the piece and kind of relating to some of her own experiences that she's had, and, and thinking about trauma also in like a cultural sense. And so I think it was a combination of all those of those memories and different factors that informed, you know, the way both of us looked at the work and how we made this. And, yeah, it was just a very rewarding experience getting to share that with her because it's like, again, it felt like a safe space, we had a lot of similar experiences. And we were also very protective of each other. And if somebody wasn't comfortable with sharing things, and we kind of let that we're like, okay, that's fine. And so, yeah, it was just, it was a very safe, collaborative experience in a way that might not have been the same and like a live performance setting with, you know, with, when I, if I had it for an ensemble where they were just performing at one time and didn't have enough rehearsal time, like, it wouldn't have felt the same as it did like making a video out of it. And like spending a lot of extended time over it together. So yeah, I think it kind of shifted, just the way I even thought about the piece. And when I had that collaborative experience with her.
Nanette McGuinness 03:51
Very nice, yeah, I laughed at the, "with not enough rehearsal time," because, you know, we do all these really hard pieces, and you come into rehearsal, you prepared your part. And if you're lucky, you'll get a few rehearsals, right? And then...
Nina Shekhar 04:05
Right.
Nanette McGuinness 04:05
...but it never seeps into your bones, right?
Nina Shekhar 04:07
Exactly. And I think that's just like the concert model, you know, we're constantly doing the next thing and then we have our rep for that concert. And, and you don't we just never have enough time to really dive deeper into it and really understand the full expression of a piece and what are all the different angles, we can tackle it, you know, like, just from a performer mindset, but also just, you know, emotionally like, a lot of pieces are very complex, and there's so much work that goes into it. And I think it's, it's just hard to be able to have that time. In most concert settings where you have like, one afternoon there's like a ton of logistics and like setup and all that that kind of eat away at that creative experience that could be there. So I think that's something that I've been thinking about more as I move through the field is how can I find ways to preserve that sense of, you know, communal experiences that sense of time, that sense of close collaboration that sometimes gets taken away, you know, in these concert settings?
Nanette McGuinness 05:22
Right, right. It's the the cost of the whole situation that ends up driving the bus. And that's tricky. Have you tried in other of your pieces? You said, you're working with multimedia? So have you tried this pairing of imagery with the music where it's embedded in the kind of construction and exploration?
Nina Shekhar 05:44
Yes, I think doing a lot of that actually, in the last few years. You know, as I said, like, post pandemic, I think it it really shifted the way I think about art making because, you know, live concerts weren't happening, then it kind of forced me to think well, what else can happen? Right? Um, so, yeah, I've been doing a lot of video work recently. You know, I did, I think the largest work I did was some that piece I was talking about with Bollywood, you know, incorporating some Bollywood samples and kind of exploring, like, brown sexuality, I would say like Indian, like cultural values around sexuality. And that piece is called "Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner," kind of thinking about, you know, the idea of sexuality and being like a sin and kind of questioning that and also thinking about, you know, ideas of queer identity. And, you know, so often that phrase is used to invalidate queer identity and kind of trying to reclaim that phrase. So no, this piece was an expression of all these things, and I made ended up making a video for it, because I, you know, I It's funny, I was like, an orchestra piece, actually, first, it was like an orchestra and electronics piece. And then I kind of wanted to also be able to do it as like a solo version, you know, with myself performing it. And so for that, yeah, yes. So for that, I was like, oh, I want to make a video for it. So I made this this long multimedia kind of project for this even this recently, I did it even with, like, interactive lighting was just a whole thing. Um, but yeah, what ended up happening is the orchestra liked the video, I wanted to use it also. So even though it wasn't really like what I thought it was gonna happen, but it worked, it worked well. So I think, you know, with that, I've been doing a lot more multimedia works like that. And, you know, I also have done smaller video projects, like I did, I'll actually another one I did was a video piece related to Gloria Stefan, and then thinking about, I guess, the relationship of like, me and my body, and the way watching her, you know, like another performer, the way that she, you know, carries herself on stage in her relationship with her body. And, you know, I'd seen in interviews that she was actually very, like, insecure about her body growing up and was very, like, very shy, very nervous on stage. So like, very self conscious, and yet, she kind of took on this larger than life persona. And and so this piece is kind of related to that, like thinking about Gloria Estefan, you know, clips of her and the way she carries her body and, kind of, with me also, like, me trying to mimic, I was kind of mimicking even, like, TikTok culture, you know, like, when you have these side by side dance videos, and, but kind of thinking of it more from like, a body image standpoint, like so often we're comparing ourselves in the media to other other people. And yeah, it became a very personal project, because I had to record myself, which I'm very nervous about, but um, yeah, it was like a really interesting kind of video project for me to do. And yeah, so I've been doing a lot more of that recently. And, yeah, it's been fun. It's been another way for me to, like another dimension for me to explore artistically beyond just thinking about music and sound.
Nanette McGuinness 09:44
Yeah, and I think it's the direction that we're all going in some way or another. The culture is so visual, and we've got all this technology that makes the visual so accessible, that I think it's a mistake not to explore it in some ways, not every time but at least a lot of times.
Nina Shekhar 10:04
Right, right. It's like another sensory experience that people can have and kind of ashamed to ignore like other different angles that we can have allowed us to explore just our own creative practice.
Nanette McGuinness 10:23
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Nina Shekhar, 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 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].
