Nina Shekhar - Part 3

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 108: Nina Shekhar - Part 3

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In this week’s episode, we talk to Nina Shekhar about her pieces “Quirkhead” and “Above the Fray," and discuss her perspective on vulnerability, identity, and mental health. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Nina Shekhar, check her out here: https://www.ninashekhar.com/. This episode was originally recorded in December 2023.

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/1903729/15258773

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, Hannah Chen

Curious to hear a little music from our guest Ursula Kwong-Brown, who we spoke to in our most recent episode, check out the world premiere of the work she just wrote for us, which we are performing on our season opening concert November 8.

Chapters

• 0:43 Do you find that as you explore the vulnerability and expand that the boundary keeps changing and that you become more comfortable? Or do you have a pretty hard stop? Where it just kind of goes, "Okay, no more."
• 6:34 You mentioned "Above the Fray," that you looked at vulnerability and maybe identity too, in a different way, from your other works. How so, if you could articulate that?

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 Nina Shekhar, who we spoke to in December 2023 [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]. Do you find that as you explore the vulnerability and expand that the boundary keeps changing and that you become more comfortable? Or do you have a pretty hard stop? Where it just kind of goes, "Okay, no more."

Nina Shekhar  00:42
I think it it changes, you know, I, for me, when I think about vulnerability, I think of kind of like ownership of identity and how much how we share that with others. And for me, I mean, after I wrote, the piece I'm talking about is called "Poor Kid", after I wrote that piece, I did kind of have a period afterwards, where I was, I fell into like, a quite major depression, like afterwards, and I think some of that was, because, you know, after you share all this stuff about yourself, that's very personal, and then I hadn't shared before, I was kind of in this void afterwards, like, "now what?" And it was, like, there's not a lot of support, you know, for artists, like after they do something like that, to, you know, help, like, cope with that, you know, and it was a really challenging time and, and then I, you know, I ended up, you know, getting going to therapy and having some sort of support, but I think since then I've been quite protective over the way I approached vulnerability and made music and realizing like, I can share things, but on my own terms, you know, and, and sometimes, you know, I've been exploring that idea of identity and in different ways, you know, like, sometimes I examine, like a peace of mind, I can think of called "Above the Fray", it's like about sort of my relationship to classical music in general, like, that piece kind of takes the Bach "Cello Prelude and G" and works it in different ways. And, and it's like, also very much related to my identity, but in a very different way, than, like other pieces I've written. And a lot of pieces of mine sometimes do things with double meanings now, and so it's kind of interesting, or sometimes I'll throw in references. Another piece, I've written recently has a lot of references to Bollywood, and it's kind of about like sexuality, and in Indian cinema and things like that. And I know that most people won't recognize some of those references, but there will be like, my mom once was in the audience, or one of these pieces, and she knew all the references right away. So like, I think that's also become part of the way I approach vulnerabilities. Like, you know, sometimes I'm sharing things of myself, but I know that not everybody will understand it, or know, what is it I'm referring to, but then there will always be specific people I'm trying to reach that will understand right away and, and I think I just changed the way I I approached, like even just sharing these elements of myself with others.

Nanette McGuinness  03:46
That makes sense, I mean, the whole point of in-jokes are there are some people who won't get them and some people who will, but the the piece still works, you know, the like the, the various Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven pieces that have jokes in them, they still work.

Nina Shekhar  04:01
Right! And I think in this context, I've been thinking about, like, yeah, this idea of inside jokes and like, who gets to be in on the joke, and I think for so long, you know, my parents never went to classical concerts. I mean, I didn't go to an orchestra concert, like a professional orchestra concert until my undergrad and well, I, you know, I didn't really have that experience. And so my parents didn't grow up with, like, understand that you're not supposed to clap between movements. You know, they were never like in on the joke, but that's why I feel sometimes when I do these pieces that have these references that only they can understand. It's like, suddenly I flipped the joke. It's like now they're the only ones nobody else's and like they're now suddenly in the powerful position. So I think that that's something that it's interesting just like flipping that power dynamic and kind of subversive way has been really fun. That's it like how I approach identity, you know, in my work.

Nanette McGuinness  05:03
I like that. What was the name of the piece? You were focusing on OCD?

Nina Shekhar  05:09
Oh, yeah. It was called "Quirkhead."

Nanette McGuinness  05:11
Quirkhead. Okay.

Nina Shekhar  05:12
Yeah, like "Q, U, IRK, head."

Nanette McGuinness  05:16
Okay.

Nanette McGuinness  05:16
That's what it sounded like.

Nina Shekhar  05:17
Yeah, no "Quirkhead" was just a nickname for myself. So, you know, I didn't know that OCD was like, there was a term for that growing up, and so I just would always say, "Well, I'm very quirky." And then I just made up this name "Quirkhead" to describe myself and then, actually over time, because there was, I don't know, I think culturally, you know, a lot of Asian cultures are very afraid about talking about mental illness and about OCD. And so I had a lot of shame around it. And I was like, afraid to even use the word OCD. So then I would use this word "Quirkhead" is like a euphemism for that. So that's what the title refers to. That's really great. Yeah, that's a term of endearment myself, because it sounded less scary than like OCD, like disorder in the word. For me, it's like, "Quirkhead!" It's like, light hearted. Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  06:21
You mentioned "Above the Fray," that you looked at vulnerability and maybe identity too, in a different way, from your other works. How so, if you could articulate that?

Nina Shekhar  06:33
Yeah, so that piece, you know, I was kind of warping some melodic structures and the very famous Bach Cello Prelude in G, which I picked, because it's probably one of the only classical pieces that my parents would recognize, you know, it's like, the quintessential piece of classical music. And, you know, that was a piece that I wrote during the pandemic, also, and, you know, so I was thinking about this idea of, of time and individual sense of time, and around this era, a lot of orchestras were doing these click track pieces, where, you know, they, everybody was in their apartment, and then they give them a click track, okay, you play your flute 2 part of this [laughs]. Like, then we'll put them all together. And then I just thought it was not really using that. That gives, you're just forcing the same model into this different situation, rather than actually thinking creatively about well, what if we're all feeling time differently? So it kind of stemmed from that. And also, you know, around this time, a lot of organizations were putting out these like, Bach recording as if like, "Oh, Bach is the savior." And I just thought it was ridiculous. I mean, there were so many things going on, there was the pandemic, there was, you know, all the protests after George Floyd, you know, all this stuff was going on. And it's like, you totally missed the moment, like you're putting out a Bach recording! And so I was thinking, like, well, what, this a way we could explore. But you know, everybody has a different relationship to this music, like, not everybody's going to think of him as a savior. Not everybody's gonna know, his music, like, we all have very different relationships. So what happens if that music rather than forcing it to be kind of preserved in this glass box, like, we allow it to degrade over time, are we allowed to detune over time or like, move through it at a different rate, or, you know, have it take on a new life, you know, over time, and, and so I've worked it into like, twelve different layers, then it was like a multitrack piece. And everybody recorded their part in their own apartment they had, like, there was no bar line, so it's all spatially notated. So they kind of moved through their own sense of time. And in a way with this piece, even though I like it forced me to examine my own relationship with Bach and when I feel like an insider when I feel like an outsider. And just kind of that whole dynamic and but it's like, what I love about that piece is that you can't really tell if I'm critiquing Bach, or if I'm glorifying Bach, which is like the whole point. And I think that that's very much reflective of my own identity. Like I grew up playing Bach Sonatas like on the flute, but but I also, you know, I never went to orchestra like I didn't really go to performances if I didn't choose to listen to it when I was growing up. So I have this kind of in and out relationship with with that music. And I think it's kind of very much reflected of my practice even now or like, what is classical music? Am I in it or am I out, like, what does that mean? And in I think, in a different way, it's a little bit more abstract that the piece that...and, I mean, there's no words in that piece, so that also changes things than like other pieces I've written that were very much rooted in like a narrative, very personal narrative. But this piece is personal in a different way. 

Nanette McGuinness  10:16
Clearly.

Nina Shekhar  10:17
And in a more conceptual way, I think, than in like a more text-based way.

Nanette McGuinness  10:21
Yeah, no, I think that notion of "What is classical music?" today is something that we as musicians, and composers as well, are really kind of unpacking and examining and kind of deciding it is kind of the question du jour in a way.

Nina Shekhar  10:42
Right, exactly. I think that's an important question that we ask. And I think it's really important, you know, just for the sustainability of our field, like to think like, why are we making the music we're making an why are we choosing to engage with it in this way? And is there a chance we can engage with it differently, or, you know, every artist is Bach is such an interesting example. Because, you know, the Baroque era, like, so much stuff was improvised, you know, and knowing him, he was also just trying to pay his bills like he was. He was the most like, perfunctory composer and he was not looking to do this grand emotional expression, the way that maybe some other composers were, and he was just like, trying to fulfill his job. And, and also, like, the practice of the tie was for performers to put themselves in the work and improvise, add ornaments, like there was not, it was meant more of like something to be changed rather than something to be austere. And so it's really interesting that now there's this notion of agree must follow the score, like a movie, I don't think he wanted that. So he probably wanted it to have a new life over time, I'm sure that he wanted people to engage creatively with his work. So I'm, in the same way that I would want people to engage creatively with my work. So I think that this notion of like, we always critique this idea of like the component composer genius or like this model, that it's like this austere thing that has to be preserved and like some vacuum sealed container is something that I think we could challenge over time and think about, how can we change our performance practice and our engagement with this music to something that is more sustainable and allows for new audiences for new voices to new opinions? To kind of also have a moment to think about how do they want to engage with that work.

Nanette McGuinness  12:42
[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]