Nicholas Reeves

Nicholas Reeves brings together classical, sacred, and popular influences in well-crafted music that is gaining attention in New York City and beyond.  His work has been performed by The New York Virtuoso Singers and Canticum Novum Singers under the direction of Harold Rosenbaum, the Winds of Laesø Art Festival in Denmark, and in a masterclass with Pierre Boulez during the IRCAM residency at Manhattan School of Music.  Reeves is a first prize recipient of the New York Virtuoso Singer Competition for his composition In Memoriam Dmitri Shostakovich. In March of 2015, the GKCAGO Schola Cantorum presented Reeves’ The Light of the World, a multi-media work for a chamber ensemble juxtaposing video testaments of survivors from the Pitești prison in Romania with a musical setting of The Sermon on the Mount.  His much anticipated first opera, Vicious, has been workshopped at the Oslo Opera Festival and continues to receive subsequent readings before its premiere.

Reeves has been the Project Manager of the Arvo Pärt Project since 2012, a unique collaboration between Arvo Pärt and St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary to further explain the spiritual content of his music in concerts, lectures, and publications.  The Project has lectured or been a part of panel discussions at the George Washington University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Westminster Choir College, and the New York Live Arts Festival.  Milestone events in the life of the project included sold out-concerts at the Kennedy Center, The Phillips Collection, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur.

In February 2009, Reeves’s work was featured in a four-day concert engagement, The Four Stop Tour.  This versatile series of performances in Manhattan encompassed four aspects of American musical culture: film, theater, sacred hymns, and concert works.  His music was heard at The Riverside Church, The 45th Street Theater, and Merkin Hall.  The first stop of the tour encompassed his multifaceted artistry in which the Oscar-winning film No Country for Old Men, famous for having a minimal musical score, was viewed with a live orchestra performing his compositions to accompany the film.  Of special interest was a historic performance of selections from Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil, in which the Vespers portion was sung as an actual Orthodox Service with propers composed by Reeves.

Reeves has studied at the Brevard Music Center and holds degrees in composition from Westminster Choir College and Manhattan School of Music, where he received a doctorate (DMA) in classical composition as a student of Richard Danielpour.  As a professor, he has lectured and instructed at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary as well as Rider University.