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Reinaldo Moya
A 2026 Guggenheim Fellow and composer whose music explores identity, memory, and migration. From his early training in Venezuela's El Sistema to performances at Carnegie Hall, Severance Hall, and the Kennedy Center, his work bridges classical tradition with the rhythms and complexity of modern Latin America.
Reinaldo Moya's music moves between the vernacular rhythms of Latin America and the formal structures of classical music, treating both as a living language. This mix is not neutral: the music is forever searching for the right language for each occasion, reaching from the sublime to the mundane, the beautiful to the ugly. Underneath it all there is something quieter: a persistent grief, and a longing for a Venezuela that exists now only in memory.
“The Island of the Imagined Birds,” the last movement and the most thrilling piece of music on Wild Cities, is built on a progression that could be a tango. But this repeated music is continually scuffed by elongation or shrinking, generating a quirky, unpredictable groove of the sort you might encounter in some contemporary jazz. It’s simultaneously brainy and physical, perfectly embodying Anderegg’s description of a “smooth surface and animated inner rhythms.” This is music I can get excited about.”
— from review of Imagined Archipelagos recording: I Care If You Listen (2016)
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