Mona Lyn Reese

Mona Lyn Reese (born August 24, 1951) is an American composer, best known for her operas and choral 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. In 2014, the San José Chamber Orchestra and Chorus performed a suite from Choose Life, Uvacharta Bachayim in the San José City Hall Rotunda. Reese received a Continental Harmony commission in 2000, created by the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts to enable small to mid-size communities in each state to commission new pieces for the millennium. Reese’s opera The Three Fat Women of Antibes received its premier performance with orchestra in May 2009 by the San José State University Opera Workshop (Michel Singher, Music Director, Daniel Helfgot, Director). The opera, written with her husband and librettist Thomas Hassing, is a humorous chamber opera for four singers based on the W. Somerset Maugham short story of the same name. The opera premiered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1998. O