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 Mona
Lyn Reese has been composing professionally since 1975.
In her recent works, she has concentrated on opera and orchestral
music. Her work is melodic and accessible with an emphasis
on driving or complex rhythms, movement, and contrasting textures.
Her music communicates and expresses emotions traditionally
or experimentally without allowing a prevailing fashion to
dictate style, form, or harmony.
Composer-in-Residence at the Minnesota Opera from 1991-1999,
she arranged works for the Minnesota Opera touring company
and conducted educational residencies to help students write
and produce original operas.
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Reese received a Continental Harmony Commission
in 2000. The American Composers' Forum and the National Endowment
for the Arts created the Continental Harmony program to enable
small to mid-size communities in each state to commission new
pieces for the millennium. Continental Harmony was an official
partner of the White House Millennium Council. Reese composed
Suite Carroll County for the Carroll County Orchestra and Chorale
in Carrollton, Ohio. |
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In 1993
she was awarded a Faith Partners Residency sponsored by the
American Composers Forum and the Otto Bremer Foundation. During
this residency, she collaborated with Delores Dufner, OSB,
on the dramatic oratorio Choose Life, Uvacharta Bachayim.
The following year, the Otto Bremer Foundation gave her an
additional grant to write a symphonic version. The symphonic
version was performed by the Billings Symphony & Chorale
(Uri Barnea, Music Director) in November of 1996 when she
was Composer-in-Residence at the Billings Symphony. Choose
Life was also performed in the prestigious "Basilica
2000" series. Teri Larson, Music Director at the Basilica,
conducted the Minnesota Sinfonia and the Basilica Choir. Choose
Life was nominated for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize.
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Goat Hall Productions of San Francisco performed excerpts
of her opera The Three Fat Women of Antibes in July
of 2003. The opera, a humorous chamber opera for four singers,
is based on a W. Somerset Maugham short story by the same
name. Thomas Hassing, known for his engaging and comic writing,
composed the libretto. The Three Fat Women of Antibes
is one of the few operas whose main characters are all female.
The opera premiered in Minneapolis in 1998. Other performances
include The University of Kansas Opera Studio (2002), Gregory
Wiest (Munich, Germany), and Terrence R. Edwards (Pella, Iowa)
who perform selected works in recital.
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Reese was selected to spend the month of June (2003) as a
Studium Scholar-in-Residence at Saint Benedict's monastery
in St. Joseph, Minnesota. During her time there, she planned
the chamber orchestra composition Little Pieces from My
Heart, commissioned by the San José Chamber Orchestra.
Reese's orchestral works have been performed by orchestras
throughout the country including the Minnesota Orchestra,
the Livingston Symphony (New Jersey),  the
Atlanta Symphony, and the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. She
had her first European performance with the Czech Radio Symphony
in February of 1997.
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