Reinaldo Moya Composer

Reinaldo Moya is a graduate of Venezuela’s El Sistema music education system. He is the recipient of the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two McKnight Composers’ Fellowships, the Van Lier Fellowship from Meet the Composer and the Aaron Copland Award. He was the inaugural winner of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Composer Award.

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His clarinet quartet I Will Dance, and Dance With You was premiered by Chiarina Chamber players (including Ricardo Morales, principal clarinet of the Philadelphia Orchestra; and Domenic Salerni from the Attacca Quartet) in March 2025. Michael Andor Brodeur of the Washington Post wrote of the piece: "But throughout this touching, introspective piece there is evidence of a profound understanding of grief — it’s unfair weight and tendency to barge in uninvited. In Moya’s music, tangents become topics, themes turn into memories and come rushing back." The premiere went on to be included on the Washington Post's Best Classical Concerts of 2025.

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His Piano Concerto was premiered in 2021 by Joyce Yang and the Bangor Symphony Orchestra in October 2021, to great acclaim: Bangor Daily News wrote “[The concerto] demonstrated that Moya is a composer who has much to say about the human condition in the 21st century, and should be listened to often.” The concerto was performed with the same soloist a second time in June 2022 by the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Rafael Payare at the Rady Shell in Jacobs Park in San Diego.

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He was the Composer-in-Residence of the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra from 2021-24, where he composed two orchestral works: Polo Romanesco (premiered at the Harris Theater for Dance in Chicago in March of 2022) and Rise for cello and orchestra (premiered by Joshua Roman in January of 2023.)

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His work Guayoyo Sketches was commissioned by Alisa Weilerstein as part of her Fragments project with performances at Carnegie Hall, Severance Hall, the Spoleto Music Festival, and throughout the US and Canada.

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As the Composer-Residence at The Schubert Club in Minnesota from 2017-19, he was commissioned  to write a chamber opera. This work, Tienda, was hailed by the Star Tribune for its "proud individuality... [and] textures of pulsing vibrancy, subtly shading harmonies to trace the fragile emotional arc of his central characters." His opera Memory Boy, with a libretto by Mark Campbell, was commissioned by the Minnesota Opera and premiered in 2016.

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His works have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra (with Osmo Vänskä, Sarah Hicks, and Chia-Hsuan Lin), the San Diego Symphony (with Rafael Payare), the Juilliard Orchestra (with Carlos Miguel Prieto, and Jeffrey Milarsky), the Chicago Philharmonic (with Scott Speck), the Annapolis Symphony (José-Luis Novo), the South Dakota Symphony (with Delta David Geir), the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela (with Joshua Dos Santos), the New Jersey Symphony (with JoAnn Falletta), the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra (with Matthew Kraemer), the Lakes Area Music Festival Orchestra (with Gemma New), the Charlottesville Symphony Orchestra (with Ben Rous), Oberlin Conservatory Orchestra (with Raphael Jiménez), the Orquesta Sinfónica de San Juan, Argentina (with Emmanuel Siffert), the Orquesta de Cámara de Bellas Artes in México (with Ludwig Carrasco). Other performers include the Jasper Quartet, the DaPonte String Quartet, , Chiarina Chamber Players, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Lysander Piano Trio, and the Grammy-winning Attacca Quartet.

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He is a graduate of The Juilliard School with master’s and doctorate degrees, studying with Samuel Adler and Robert Beaser. ​He received his undergraduate degree in Music Composition from West Virginia University, where he studied with John Beall. Mr. Moya has taught at St. Olaf College and the Interlochen Arts Camp, and Augsburg University in Minneapolis. As of the fall of 2023, Mr. Moya is an Associate Professor of Composition and Music Theory at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.