Biography
Reginald L. Mobley ranks among the small number of African American performers specializing in the countertenor register, and his engagements have expanded steadily across Europe and North America. In addition, he has worked to broaden participation in classical music and, in particular, early choral repertory.
Born in Gainesville, Florida, on October 21, 1977, Mobley sang regularly as a youth at the city’s Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church. During high school he encountered the music of Bach and became captivated by it. He also pursued visual art, securing a scholarship in that field to Davidson College in North Carolina; he continues to offer concertgoers one of his characteristic stick-figure sketches on request. When carpal tunnel syndrome ended his prospects as an artist, he transferred to Oakwood University, the Seventh-day Adventist institution in Huntsville, Alabama. There he trained as a tenor, experimented with composition and conducting, yet sensed no genuine artistic alignment. At the University of Florida he resumed vocal instruction, and faculty member Jean-Ronald LaFond overheard him using falsetto in a barbershop quartet. After Mobley sang an E-major scale above middle C at LaFond’s request, the teacher inquired whether he grasped the implications; unaware of any transgression, Mobley asked if he was in difficulty, since countertenor technique was virtually unknown in Southern conservatories and the examples he had encountered struck him as female voices. LaFond replied that Mobley possessed the finest countertenor instrument he had ever encountered.
Between 2002 and 2004 Mobley performed as singer and actor at Tokyo Disney, chiefly within a barbershop quartet, and he also appeared at a nearby U.S. Air Force installation. His first sustained classical affiliation was with the Miami choir Seraphic Fire, for which he recorded several projects and remained active well into the following decade while establishing an independent solo profile. Early solo work took him principally to Europe, where he collaborated with OH! in Poland, the Bach Society of Stuttgart, Germany, and, repeatedly, the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra led by John Eliot Gardiner. In the United States he has appeared both with period-instrument ensembles such as the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Washington Bach Consort and with modern-orchestra groups including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Combining performance with advocacy, Mobley has served as programming consultant to Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society and as Visiting Artist for Diversity Outreach with the Baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire. In autumn 2021 he toured Europe alongside the Budapest Festival Orchestra. He has further collaborated with the Agave Baroque orchestra on the albums Peace in Our Time (2018) and American Originals: A New World, a New Canon (2021). Under contract to the Alpha label, he scheduled his first solo recording for release in 2023.
Born in Gainesville, Florida, on October 21, 1977, Mobley sang regularly as a youth at the city’s Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church. During high school he encountered the music of Bach and became captivated by it. He also pursued visual art, securing a scholarship in that field to Davidson College in North Carolina; he continues to offer concertgoers one of his characteristic stick-figure sketches on request. When carpal tunnel syndrome ended his prospects as an artist, he transferred to Oakwood University, the Seventh-day Adventist institution in Huntsville, Alabama. There he trained as a tenor, experimented with composition and conducting, yet sensed no genuine artistic alignment. At the University of Florida he resumed vocal instruction, and faculty member Jean-Ronald LaFond overheard him using falsetto in a barbershop quartet. After Mobley sang an E-major scale above middle C at LaFond’s request, the teacher inquired whether he grasped the implications; unaware of any transgression, Mobley asked if he was in difficulty, since countertenor technique was virtually unknown in Southern conservatories and the examples he had encountered struck him as female voices. LaFond replied that Mobley possessed the finest countertenor instrument he had ever encountered.
Between 2002 and 2004 Mobley performed as singer and actor at Tokyo Disney, chiefly within a barbershop quartet, and he also appeared at a nearby U.S. Air Force installation. His first sustained classical affiliation was with the Miami choir Seraphic Fire, for which he recorded several projects and remained active well into the following decade while establishing an independent solo profile. Early solo work took him principally to Europe, where he collaborated with OH! in Poland, the Bach Society of Stuttgart, Germany, and, repeatedly, the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra led by John Eliot Gardiner. In the United States he has appeared both with period-instrument ensembles such as the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Washington Bach Consort and with modern-orchestra groups including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Combining performance with advocacy, Mobley has served as programming consultant to Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society and as Visiting Artist for Diversity Outreach with the Baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire. In autumn 2021 he toured Europe alongside the Budapest Festival Orchestra. He has further collaborated with the Agave Baroque orchestra on the albums Peace in Our Time (2018) and American Originals: A New World, a New Canon (2021). Under contract to the Alpha label, he scheduled his first solo recording for release in 2023.
Albums
