Reginald Mobley

One of the few African American exponents of the countertenor voice, Reginald L. Mobley has a successful and growing career on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been active in promoting greater diversity in the fields of classical music generally and early choral music more specifically. Mobley was born in Gainesville, Florida, on October 21, 1977. He grew up attending and singing at Gainesville's Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church, and he discovered and was fascinated by Bach as a high school student. He was also interested in art, and he earned an art scholarship to Davidson College in North Carolina (and to this day encourages concertgoers to ask him for one of his stick figure drawings). A severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome put the brakes on his art career, however, and he moved to the Seventh-day Adventist-affiliated Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama. There he studied tenor singing and dabbled in composition and conducting, but he still did not feel that he was making a real connection. Mobley transferred to the University of Florida, where he resumed vocal studies. A teacher, Jean-Ronald LaFond, heard Mobley singing falsetto in a barbershop quartet. He played an E major scale above middle C and asked Mobley to sing it. When Mobley complied, the professor asked him if he knew what this meant; Mobley, not understanding, asked if he was in trouble (countertenor singing was little known in Southern music programs, and he thought the countertenors he had heard were women). The professor responded that Mobley had the best countertenor voice he had ever heard. From 2002 to 2004, Mobley worked at Tokyo Disney as a singer and actor, mostly performing in a barbershop quartet; he also appeared there at a U.S. Air Force base. His first regular engagement in classical music came with the Miami-based choir Seraphic Fire, where he made several recordings with the group and remained a member well into the 2010s as he built his solo career. That career took Mobley at first mostly to Europe, where he performed with such groups as OH! in Poland, the Bach Society in Stuttgart, Germany, and, on multiple occasions, the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra under the baton of conductor John Eliot Gardiner. In the U.S., Mobley has appeared with both early music ensembles, including the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Washington Bach Consort and modern-instrument groups, such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Increasingly active in promoting diversity in classical music, Mobley has combined that activity with performing, serving as programming consultant for the Handel & Haydn Society in Boston and as a Visiting Artist for Diversity Outreach with the Baroque ensemble Apollo's Fire. In the fall of 2021, Mobley toured Europe with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. He has also performed with the Agave Baroque orchestra and made two albums with that group, Peace in Our Time (2018) and American Originals: A New World, a New Canon (2021). Signed to the Alpha label, he planned to release his solo debut there in 2023.
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