Paul Reale

Composer Paul Reale wrote music in many genres, including a large number of concertos for various instruments. He was also an important educator, a pianist, an architect, an antique vehicle restorer, and an Olympic-level cyclist. Reale was born on March 2, 1943, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He attended Columbia University, studying English literature and hard sciences before deciding to switch to composition. He earned a degree in that field in 1967 after studies with Otto Luening and Chou Wen-Chung. Deciding on a career as a composer and educator, Reale went on to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied composition with George Crumb and George Rochberg. In 1969, Reale joined the faculty at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), remaining there until his retirement in 2004. His compositional output gathered speed over his career; an early work was Salon Music for piano (1975). Reale's compositional output was large and covered nearly every instrument, although he did not write electronic works. His music was tonal in orientation, with influences from Baroque counterpoint and jazz, and he called his formal structures quasi-cinematic. He composed numerous solo keyboard works, including eight piano sonatas as well as four piano concertos, concertos for cello, violin, organ, three trumpets, seven trumpets, and a triple concerto. He also wrote dramatic and choral works, as well as song cycles and wind ensemble pieces. Reale was an influential teacher whose students included future classical composers, film composers, performers, and educators. Reale had many interests outside music, including motorcycle and antique car restoration, gardening, architecture (he designed his own dream home in suburban Los Angeles), and cycling; he frequently commuted from his home in the foothills to the UCLA campus and biked 25 miles in the mountains almost daily. He considered trying out for the 1984 U.S. Olympic cycling team and regretted not having done so. Reale remained active as a composer even after retirement, and he completed several works in the year before his death from prostate cancer in Canoga Park, California, on July 22, 2020. As of the mid-2020s, some 40 of his works have been recorded.
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