Rajna Swaminathan

Rajna Swaminathan is an improviser, composer, scholar and Professor of Music at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine. She holds a Ph.D. in music from Harvard University’s Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry program. Her dissertation, Time, Virtuosity, and Ethics Otherwise: Queer Resonances for Diasporic Play, represents a dynamic dialogue between scholarship and creative practice.

Swaminathan’s primary instrument is the mrudangam, a central percussion instrument in Karnatik music and South Indian dance. As the founder and leader of the ensemble RAJAS, she is recognized nationally and internationally for forging new intercultural horizons shaped by improvisational practices rooted in South Asian and African diasporic traditions, creative music and jazz.

Her compositions have been commissioned and presented by leading institutions, including Chamber Music America, National Sawdust, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Bang on a Can Marathon. At UC Irvine, she is a core faculty member in the department’s Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology (ICIT) Ph.D. program, where her teaching integrates cross-cultural inquiry into rhythm and embodiment with queer theory and Black studies.