In the world of music, a young native son also rises, wielding a baton that casts a musical spell on a foreign stage across the Pacific.
His name is Jose Lorenzo Reyna Jr., a promising young Filipino maestro whom I met during my last year as chairman of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the president of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). He was on a short visit to Manila.
I was elated to know that he is the newest assistant conductor of the award-winning Lamont Symphony Orchestra and Opera Theater. At the same time, he is also the newly appointed assistant conductor of the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra in the thriving cosmopolitan city of Denver in Colorado.
Given this high level of achievement for a young Filipino musician, I am surprised he has not been given the proper coverage by the local media.
Now that I’m no longer busy as the overseer of the country’s two main cultural agencies, I have the time to take up the cudgels for this young achiever and let our countrymen know more about his accomplishments. We all need to root for him by acclamation and hoist him up as an inspiration for budding Filipino talents in all the arts, and not just in the field of music.
Where did this young musician come from? Prior to his career as a conductor, Reyna studied with the noted Filipino bassoonist Noel Singcuenco. As a student, he traveled and performed around the Asia as a bassoonist with major orchestras based in Manila.
Later on, Reyna caught the conducting bug and consequently studied conducting under the tutelage of internationally renowned composer-conductor Prof. Chino Toledo and Prof. Rodney Ambat at the University of the Philippines College of Music. He was the first to be accepted into the rigorous Orchestral Conducting undergraduate program in the university in over two decades. Furthermore, he was a beneficiary of several scholarships in recognition of his prodigious talent.
In 2019, he worked with the Yamanashi Symphony Orchestra in Japan as an apprentice of Maestra Yuri Nitta, the current president of the Sibelius Society of Japan and conductor of Aichi Symphony Orchestra.
From Japan, Reyna landed in Denver, Colorado as a student of Cleveland Orchestra’s Brett Mitchell at the University of Denver Lamont School of Music. He was the only student to have been admitted to the competitive program in the fall of 2022.
He soon became the new assistant conductor for the Lamont Symphony Orchestra. For his debut project with the Lamont Symphony Orchestra, Reyna directly worked with no less than Eric Whitacre, a world-class Grammy award-winning artist. A huge honor and rare achievement indeed for a young Filipino conductor. Reyna handled all the rehearsals and preparations of the LSO prior to Whitacre’s arrival in Denver, Colorado.
Together with the Lamont Symphony, Reyna premiered a tone-poem for orchestra by Philippine National Artist for Music Antonino Buenaventura—“By the Hillside,” a piece last performed in the US by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra back in the 1950s under the baton of Thor Johnson. This premiere was performed alongside Dvorak’s 6th symphony and Glazunov’s violin concerto. It was well received by the audience of Denver. Countless number of people were thanking him after the concert for bringing this piece into life.
As if his responsibilities as assistant director of Lamont Symphony were not heavy enough, Reyna was also appointed as the assistant conductor of the Denver Philharmonic! To prepare for the celebration of the said Philharmonic’s 75th anniversary, he was tasked with handling a number of rehearsals and sectionals with very challenging repertoire, which included Tchaikovsky’s 5th, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor,” Grant-Still’s Afro-American Symphony, among many others.
In addition, Reyna worked once again work with the Lamont Symphony with performances of the works of Korngold, Czerny, and Puccini.
I hope the CCP can invite him to conduct the PPO one of these days. Better yet, why not bring the entire Denver Symphony Orchestra with him as conductor?
Given the talent and the panache of this budding Filipino version of Toscanini, his stature will surely rise on a continuous crescendo toward further fame.
Bravissimo, Maestro Jose Lorenzo Reyna Jr!