Local Catholic composer's works premier in Music Film Festival and Utah Arts Festival

Intermountain Catholic

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Alfonso Tenreiro plays the organ and serves as the music director of Saint Rose of Lima Parish choir. He also is a composer and music director at Saint Joseph Catholic Elementary and High School. IC photos/Christine Young

OGDEN —Utah composer Alfonso Tenreiro’s music premiered in the 2011 Park City Music Film Festival in the short film "Adler’s Bus Stop" May 13-30. His harp concerto will also be featured June 23 at the Utah Arts Festival.

As Saint Joseph Catholic Elementary and High school music director, Tenreiro teaches band and choir; he also is the music director at Saint Rose of Lima Parish in Layton.

Tenreiro composed the music for "Adler’s Bus Stop," directed by Utah film maker Christopher Morgan.

The annual Park City Music Film Festival celebrates the contributions of composers in film, said Morgan. "It’s one of the few festivals that focuses on the music aspect of film making."

Morgan describes Tenreiro as a gifted artist. "He was able to successfully enhance the mood of the film with his gorgeous and restrained orchestration. I loved meeting with him to go over the emotional points of the story and what I as a director hoped to achieve. He totally understood what I was trying to convey, and brought more to the creative process than I could have ever hoped for."

"Adler’s Bus Stop" also played in April at the Image Film Festival, which is organized by the Diocese of Trenton, N.J. "We were honored when it won the Best Picture Award in the General Category," said Morgan.

The film also won Gold Medal for Excellence in Original Music for a short film in the 2011 Park City Music Film Festival. "Adler’s Bus Stop" will play in the Foursite Film Festival in Ogden on June 11 at 2:30 p.m. at Union Station. Admission is free.

Also in June, Tenreiro’s concerto "Concertino for Harp Strings" will be featured at the Utah Arts Festival. Harpist Natalia Yates, who will play the concerto, finds it to be very exciting, quick and unexpected. "It keeps you on the edge of your seat," said Yates, a harpist of 20 years. "I like how challenging Alfonso composes music for harpists. He has a very unique writing style."

In 1998, Tenreiro won the Utah Arts Festival Orchestral Commission competition with his piece "Mountain Echoes," premiered by the Utah Symphony, which caught the ear of John Costa, an Arts Festival advisory board member and co-coordinator of the Utah Arts Festival National Composition program.

"I met Alfonso when he won the Utah Symphony commission in 1998 and I know him to be a good composer, an excellent artist and a good person. ‘Mountain Echoes’ was an excellent piece, so we commissioned his work for this year’s festival. We try to present the works of Utah composers," said Costa.

Tenreiro wrote "Concertino for Harp and Strings" in 1986, "which led to more commissions in Venezuela and the United States," said Tenreiro, who was born in Venezuela. "I was an undergraduate in college and composed the concerto for a silver wedding anniversary in Venezuela. That led to a well-known conductor in Venezuela playing it at a concert and commissioning me to write another piece. This concerto has been professionally recorded and played several times in the United States."

Tenreiro moved to the United States in 1981 to attend Marmion Military Academy in Aurora, Ill., a preparatory college run by Benedictine monks. "I entered as a junior in high school," said Tenreiro. "It was from living daily around the monks and learning theology that my inner spiritual life developed. From there I studied music at Indiana University in Bloomington and received a bachelor’s degree in music composition with organ as a minor and flute as a secondary instrument. My master’s degree is in Music Composition and Choral Conducting.

"I have a well-developed musical ear, and have always had compositional ideas in my head, but I didn’t know how to write them down until I learned how to read music playing the organ as a child," he said.