Electrified Air LIVE by SOLI Chamber Ensemble
Coming March 17
SOLI Chamber Ensemble releases a live album of collaborations with electric guitarist D.J. Sparr on March 17, including Jay's piece "Pepto-Bismol Pink" for electric guitar and clarinet. More info here
RENMENTALITY: STREAMING NOW
PREORDER CDs TODAY
Renaissance Men, New England's premier male vocal chamber ensemble, has released their third full-length album, RenMentality, on streaming platforms. Preorder CDs here!
The album features a diverse array of music from composers with lived experience of mental illness throughout history: fresh interpretations of traditional choral works by Schumann, Beethoven, Monteverdi, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky, breathtaking renditions of rarely heard works by Charles Ives and Brian Wilson, and tape-cassette recorded covers of songs featured on Nirvana's iconic “MTV: Unplugged."
The album's centerpiece is the world-premiere recording of Jay Mobley's When I Look Back: Theme and Variations, a multi-movement, cross-genre work for eight individual male voices, using texts derived from live interviews in coordination with National Alliance on Mental Illness Massachusetts. RenMentality de-stigmatizes and humanizes the realities of mental health challenges and offers comfort to those whom relate, as well as entertains with ethereal, expressive vocal art.
RenMentality was created by an all-star team of Grammy and Latin-Grammy Award winning producers and engineers; produced by Tyler Graham Chester (Madison Cunningham, Sara Watkins), engineered by Alex Venguer (Barbie: The Movie, Rufus Wainwright), and mastered by Kim Rosen (Allison Russell, The Milk Carton Kids). Co-production and musical supervision by Jay Mobley and RenMen Artistic Director Eric Christopher Perry. RenMentality was recorded March 31-April 4 2022 at Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and Ghost Hit Recording, West Springfield, Massachusetts.
Bio
Jay Mobley is a composer, singer-songwriter, and theater artist. His music is dynamic and polystylistic, drawing on diverse influences. Mobley frequently develops new stage works, often serving as music director for new musical theater productions, with several world premieres among his credits. His score to the new musical play Who Would Be King, a postmodern re-imagining of the story of King Saul with theater company Liars & Believers, has been performed at American Repertory Theater, the Philadelphia Fringe festival, and at The Theater 511 (in a "fling" with Ars Nova) in New York City.
As a singer-songwriter, Jay can be seen playing as a solo artist in the Cincinnati area. Formerly, he fronted the progressive pop band Cousins in Cincinnati, and Jasper & the Rubber Policemen in New York and Boston. He is one half of the experimental improvised duo The Monk Subversive, and in 2018 toured the US from Boston to Los Angeles by bicycle in the folk duo Going S. As a sideman and theater performer, he has sung, acted, and played banjo, guitar, mandolin, piano, drums, and electronics. His music has been played by SOLI Chamber Ensemble, Cincinnati New Music, and Fredonia Guitar Quartet. He recently portrayed the role of Jacques in Liars & Believers' A Story Beyond, and sings and plays guitar as a member of Cincinnati New Music.
In his recent work, Mobley has often used concert music as a vehicle for amplifying the voices of others. His eight-voice song cycle "When I Look Back: Theme and Variations," commissioned by New England's vocal chamber ensemble Renaissance Men, together with the National Alliance on Mental Illness Massachusetts, examines the lives of men and women with lived experience of mental illness. The libretto consists of interview conversations conducted by the composer, edited for length. It is a humanizing and compassionate look into the worlds of its interview subjects. Similarly, his piece “Songs from Our Mothers,” commissioned by tenor Mishael Eusebio, takes its text from interviews conducted by Mobley and Eusebio with their mothers about experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mobley holds an MusB in composition from the State University of New York at Fredonia and an MM in composition from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.