Beyond the Choir

Having mastered 16th Century choir music, attended Juilliard and worked for Philip Glass, young composer NICO MUHLY hits his stride with a debut album, film and television scores and more

25 year-old composer Nico Muhly has just issued his debut full-length recording, Speaks Volumes (Bedroom Community). It's a beautifully engineered, very immediate sounding album, overseen by the Icelandic producer Valgeir Sigurosson, best known for his association with the avantpop star, Björk. "I wanted to avoid that classical music recorded sound, which is essentially a reproduction of the concert experience," says Muhly of working with Sigurosson. "We were interested in recording the music from almost inside the instruments – for the listener to feel like he or she is inside the viola, rather than in the second row center. It wasn't so much a 'rock' as a 'recorded' sensibility."

While still a very young man, Muhly has managed to pack a large amount of musical experiences and influences into his life. The most formative part of his childhood was joining a boys choir in Providence, Rhode Island – a musical turning point for Nico. "I became very interested in music then and got good at it very quickly," Muhly recalls. What he responded to were "the repertory, the community feeling and the fact that beautiful music was being made, but not really for the applause. There is a sense in a choir that you really have to know what you're doing." The choir specialized in the music of such 16th Century English composers as William Byrd and Thomas Tallis, esoteric material for a twelve year-old, and it undoubtedly instilled in him a fearlessness of music that is out of the mainstream.

Muhly began studying composition and composing original works in his mid-teens and, after living in Italy for a period with his mother, started weekend private composition lessons at Harvard with David Rakowski, a disciple of Milton Babbitt. Rakowski was another important exemplar for Muhly. "He sees the 'big picture,'" says Muhly, "and is obsessed with details at the same time. For him, it comes out of the twelve-tone tradition, while I work in a different tradition."

For Nico, that tradition includes, at least in part, minimalism, a late 20th Century style at odds with followers of both twelve-tone and tonal music. "I grew up with minimalism as something good," declares Muhly. "I never had any problem with it. I see it as a source of emotional possibility." That level of comfort was helpful in bringing Muhly into the orbit of Philip Glass, one of minimalism's most successful proponents. When Nico began to study at Juilliard (simultaneously pursuing a degree in English Literature at Columbia University), he took a job with Glass. "Philip needed someone that knew how to do exactly what I know," explains Muhly. "MIDI programming. I would make MIDI demos for film scores." The connection is an ongoing one — in November 2006, Muhly conducted a chamber ensemble in Paris for the world premiere of a new ballet titled Amoveo, utilizing re-orchestrated music from Glass's Einstein on the Beach.

Muhly, who was busy enough pursuing his degree from Juilliard, interestingly chose to also study English Literature at Columbia. "I believe that you can't write music if your mind is focused only on music," he says, adding, "I wanted to have a completely separate life in books – one that had no respect for the concert season. " He is equally candid about not staying on at Juilliard to obtain a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. "It was the wisest decision I've ever made," he says. "One's twenties are a very fertile time for the mind and the idea of spending the majority if not the entirety of my twenties in an institution, for me, would be a big mistake."

In addition to Speaks Volumes, Muhly has a number of musical irons in the fire. He scored the music to Josua, a film featured at this year's Sundance Film Festival. He also recently scored a segment of MTV2's strange puppet/reality program, Wonder Showzen, adding his stately music to a bizarre series of man-in-the-street interviews (conducted by a furry blue puppet). On March 16, 2007 at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Muhly comes full circle as a featured performer, along with the Vox Vocal Ensemble, in a concert of his own music, which he is augmenting with short choral works from the 16th century tradition of his childhood. Nico's Icelandic producer, Valgeir Sigurosson, will be on hand to add electronic sounds to the program. "For me, the Anglican choral tradition and early American minimalism.are the two emotional nodes of my music," Nico says. "It's funny, because I know those are two musics which are totally underrepresented in America — you can totally cruise on through Juilliard without ever encountering that stuff."

— Jim Steinblatt


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