Dr. Nicholas Reeves
Professor of Music, Adelphi University

Dr. Reeves has produced concerts both privately and in conjunction with St. Vladimir’s Seminary on themes ranging from the oppression of Orthodox composers during the Soviet era to the St. Matthew Passion of Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev). Dr. Reeves was appointed the Project Manager of the Arvo Pärt Project in 2012, a unique collaboration between Arvo Pärt and St. Vladimir’s Seminary to further explain the spiritual content of his music in concerts, lectures, and publications. Since June of last year, he has organized twice “Interpreting Orthodox Sacred Choral Music: A Master Class in Choral Conducting and a Choral Workshop with Vladimir Gorbik,” once here at the Seminary (2012) and again at St. Seraphim Orthodox Christian Church in Santa Rosa, CA (2013).

Since 2003, Dr. Reeves has been Director of Music at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in East Meadow, New York, in addition to maintaining a private voice, composition, and conducting studio. He 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 composer Dr. 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 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 the Manhattan School of Music. In February of 2013, the William Jewell College’s Center for Justice and Sustainability invited Dr. Reeves to attend its summit on reconciliation, where his new multi-media cantata based on the phenomenon of the Pitești Prison was premiered. Dr. Reeves was named the 2010 winner of the New York Virtuoso Singer Competition for his composition In Memoriam Dmitri Shostakovich. In September of the same year, his much anticipated first opera, Vicious, was workshopped at the Oslo Opera Festival.

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. Of special interest was an 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 Dr. Reeves. 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.