R.A. (Rod) Moulds (b. 1958) began piano study at the age of seven, and went on to study Fine Arts (1978) at the Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, Maryland, and obtained a Bachelor of Music (1982) from the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he studied piano performance with Dana Ragsdale and Stanley Waldoff, and composition with William Presser. While employed full-time by the US Department of Defense from 1982 until 2013, Moulds continued to compose and perform, serving as church organist at the Glen Burnie Baptist Church for a decade and writing music for the church choir, as well as being an active participant in various Baltimore-based music groups, such as Res Musica and Industrial Arts. During this time Moulds arranged for recordings of a few of his orchestral works, and also worked with musicians such as Rob Haskins to provide music for performances in Maryland and the state of New York. Moulds retired from the US Civil Service in 2013, and relocated to Cork, Ireland, in 2015.
After beginning composition in earnest in about 1980, his music exhibited an idiosyncratic, non-dogmatic post-tonal style, which was soon abandoned in favour of a more eclectic manner. Around 1992 his music made increasing use of tonal materials, not as pastiche or with postmodern irony, but rather as acknowledgement of the continuing power of such music to have a complex, expressive effect on performers and audiences. These later works exhibit a wide variety of influences, integrated within his own graceful, sophisticated sensibility. Mr Moulds has written close to one hundred compositions.
