Composer feature – Reinaldo Moya

One of my favorite local composers is Reinaldo Moya, and this week I’d like to share some of his music for orchestra and strings. Click here to explore several recordings of his work. Reinaldo is originally from Venezuela, and now teaches composition at Augsburg University in Minneapolis. In 2016, his Passacaglia for Orchestra was chosen as the winner of the Earshot Composers Competition sponsored by the American Composers Orchestra. He also recently served as Composer-in-Residence for the Schubert Club and has written several operas that have been performed in New York and Minnesota. When I listen to recordings of his ensemble pieces I hear a fascinating intricacy and interplay between the instruments, and a wonderful variety of textures and overlapping melodies!

Want to go deeper? Click here to learn about Moya’s 2019 opera, commissioned by the Schubert Club. Tienda tells the story of Luis Garzón, a Mexican musician who immigrated to Minneapolis in 1886 and opened a small Mexican grocery store, or tienda de abarotes, in St. Paul in the 1920s. Although Luis was fully integrated into Minneapolitan society, his store served as a community hub for the newest arrivals from Mexico, many of whom had fled the Mexican Revolution to work on the sugar beet farms of rural Minnesota. The opera explores the immigrant experience and reveals a chapter in the history of St. Paul that is unfamiliar to many community members.