Mona Lyn Reese

Mona Lyn Reese is an American composer. Her work is melodic and emphasizes driving or complex rhythms. Reese was Composer in Residence at the Minnesota Opera from 1991–99. In 1993, she was awarded a Faith Partners Residency sponsored by the American Composers Forum and the Otto Bremer Foundation. She collaborated with Delores Dufner OSB, on the oratorio Choose Life. The following year, the Otto Bremer Foundation gave her a grant to write a symphonic version, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1995. The San José Chamber Orchestra and Chorus recorded Choose Life at Skywalker Sound and released the album in 2011. Reese received a Continental Harmony commission in 2000, created by the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts to enable communities in each state to commission new pieces for the millennium. Reese composed Suite Carroll County for the Carroll County Orchestra and Chorale in Carrollton, Ohio. Reese's opera The Three Fat Women of Antibes received its premier performance with orchestra in May 2009 by the SJSU Opera Workshop. Reese’s orchestral works have been performed the Minnesota Orchestra, the Livingston Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Minnesota Sinfonia, and the San José Chamber Orchestra. She had her first European performance with the Czech Radio Symphony in 1997.