From The New York Times: Nico Muhly On Opera and Life

Nico Muhly is one of today’s most important composers.

This article is copyright protected, so just a few notes.

By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
Published: November 4, 2011

Nico Muhly

“Mr. Muhly, 30, whose high-profile commissions include a work for the Metropolitan Opera, said that as a gay man he is particularly interested in the government’s role in personal relationships. He explores a longstanding fascination with polygamy in his chamber opera “Dark Sisters,” a story of a polygamist family in a Mormon offshoot whose children are removed by state officials concerned about child abuse.”

See the full article here.

From Q2 Music: Nico Muhly Discusses His Catalogue

Q2 is the 24/7 New Music Stream from New York Public Radio

Monday, October 10, 2011

“Nico Muhly has already managed to build not one, but around three or four careers for himself as a composer. With his work on movie scores and indie-rock albums, he has one toe inching towards pop-culture recognition, while keeping one foot firmly in the classical mainstream with a substantial body of pieces composed for the likes of the New York Philharmonic and the English National Opera. And then there are his pet projects, the pieces he and a circle of close friends—folksinger Sam Amidon, singer/keyboardist Thomas Bartlett, electronic artists Ben Frost and Valgeir Sigurðsson, and violist Nadia Sirota—create together in Valgeir’s studio and on tour. But closest to Muhly’s heart is the repertoire of sacred choral music he’s created, drawing on his experiences as a boy chorister to write for music for performance in both churches and concert halls.”

Listen to Nico Muhly introduce his works.”

Nico Muhly

See the full post and listen to some of the pieces here.

From Nadia Sirota on Q2 with Olivia Giovetti: “En-gay-gement Party”

Nadia Sirota on Q2 streams weekdays at 12:00 noon and midnight at Q2

Celebrating gay and lesbian composers

“Usually, we remember where we were when national tragedy hits. However, I’m willing to bet that we’ll someday be telling our grandchildren where we were on the night of Friday, June 24, when the New York State legislature approved a gay marriage bill—becoming the sixth state of the union to legalize same-sex marriage.

I got the call when we were leaving the celebratory and life-affirming The Cunning Little Vixen at the New York Philharmonic. Friends in the audience for The Normal Heart heard the news announced from the stage and one friend discovered the passing when he went to take his dog out for an evening walk in the West Village. The amount of love passing around the city and Internet ether was flooring.

We’re continuing the love this week with a celebration of gay and lesbian composers. We kick off with the jubilant Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein, who, in Alex Ross’s words, was gay “on certain days of the week” and grappled with his sexuality at a time when society was closely closeted (one imagines that he tapped into his own personal struggles when penning his 1983 opera, A Quiet Place).

We also look at real-life musical partners like Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti or John Corigliano and Mark Adamo, and even go back in time to hear the radical musical leanings of such greats as Tchaikovsky and Benjamin Britten, while also setting the dial forward to hear works by Corey Dargel, Meredith Monk and Eve Beglarian.”

At the web page for this program, you will also find an “…archival interview (with music!) between this show’s regular host Nadia Sirota and composer Nico Muhly, which was produced as part of WNYC’s 2009 Homophony Festival.”

Olivia Giovetti

Nadia Sirota

Nico Muhly: Seeing Is Believing – Out Today

Nico Muhly’s new album, Seeing Is Believing is out today, available at Amazon. I listened to it at NPR/music and I loved it. I bought it today in .mp3. I am not a musician or a critic, so, no judgements here. You can still visit the NPR/music page to listen to the album.

Suffice it to say, Nico is probably the most important new New Music composer on the scene today. Nico is about 30 years old. If you want to see how prolific he has been, check him out on this page at Wikipedia. If you are a Q2 listener, you know you will hear plenty of his work.

From Q2 Music: ” ‘Hi, I’m Nico Muhly…’ “

Q2 is the 24/7 New Music Stream from New York Public Radio

Nico Muhly Provides Personalized Introductions to his Key Works
Friday, June 17, 2011

Nico Muhly

“Joining us from the BBC studios in London in advance of the world premiere of Two Boys, Nico Muhly also takes time to conduct us through a tour of the kaleidoscopic influences behind his already prodigious catalog.

From his musical awakenings as a boy chorister singing English verse anthems to throwing together dinners for close friends to the tone rows of Webern’s Op. 24, all manner of inspiration, both timeless and contemporary, sacred and secular, finds expression in his music. Through the ensemble of these exclusive introductions, we begin to appreciate the complexity of a compositional voice that is searching to define itself as both uncompromisingly modern and distinctive but also steeped in tradition and indebted to such elder statesmen as Steve Reich, John Corigliano, Philip Glass, David Lang, Christopher Rouse and David Rakowski.

Hear these introductions preceding the piece in question in Olivia Giovetti’s interview with Nico Muhly Monday at noon and throughout the entire five-day festival, ENO Does Nico, beginning Monday, June 20.”

Listen to over thirty tracks here at the web page.

Olivia Giovetti

At NPR/music: First Listen – Nico Muhly, ‘Seeing Is Believing’

by Olivia Giovetti of WQXR and Q2
June 12, 2011

Olivia Giovetti

“Nico Muhly has a flair for entrances. His 2007 album, Speaks Volumes, opens with a cello toward the apex of its register that quickly takes a multi-octave plunge. Mothertongue, from 2008, frenetically launches with a repeated high-octane read-through of the alphabet. Last year’s I Drink the Air Before Me pierces with a series of staccato arrows paired with more luscious, ominous rumbles, while its sister release, A Good Understanding, is heralded by a bracing organ flourish.

Nico Muhly

Varied though these opening salvos may be, they always signal a true listening experience. With his newest album, Seeing Is Believing, Muhly doesn’t let listeners down: A repeated arabesque on a violin curves and twirls as several additional layers of strings and percussion are added to the spiral, at once complementing and contrasting the title work’s first four notes, culminating with the addition of winds. It’s not unlike the ever-expanding universe, the mapping of which inspired this concerto for solo electric six-string violin. For nearly 30 minutes, Muhly commands rapt attention, referencing influences from former mentor Philip Glass to Stravinsky, circa Rite of Spring, and Ravel at his most impressionistic.”

Nico Muhly Seeing Is Believeing
Bedroom Community
Released via Decca Records

See the full article, and listen to the whole album or individual tracks here.

From NPR/music, Nico Muhly on Finding One’s Way into Serious Music Through Games

Nico Muhly: Gaming One’s Way Into Classical Music

“I want to offer a slightly more obscure but, I think, much more popular (in terms of numbers) counterexample. Although my parents had classical music on LP’s in the house, the childhood music I remember the most vividly is fragments from either live performances or, strangely, video games at my friends’ houses.

For me, living in the country, playing a video game was sort of like music minus one: The actions of my hands informed, in a strange way, the things I heard. Collect a coin, and a delighted glockenspiel sounds. Move from navigating a level above ground to one below ground, and the eager French chromaticism of the score changes to a spare, beat-driven minimal texture. Hit a star, and suddenly the score does a metric modulation. All of these things come to bear in a later musical education; I’m positive I understand how augmented chords change an emotional texture because of Nintendo music.

These are private musical revelations that happened in the manic, parched late-night of a sleepover, but then came to bear later in the context of actual chamber music.”

See the full article here.

Combining My Interests: Nico Muhly Should Write Music for Brian Cox’s next “Wonders…” series

I maintain two blogs, one on Music, one on Science. This post will appear in each blog.

Short and sweet.

Combining my two interests: Nico Muhly…

Nico Muhly

should write music for Brian Cox’s next “Wonders…” project

Brian Cox

So, here it goes.

Nico Muhly in the Wall St Journal

Copyright protected, so just a taste-

The Pop Scene

“Nico Muhly with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus

St. Ann’s Warehouse
38 Water St., Brooklyn
(718) 254-8779
Thursday-Saturday

By ANDY BATTAGLIA

“A singular character who composes stately classical music when not writing arrangements for indie rockers or tapping away at his deliciously histrionic blog, 29-year-old Nico Muhly enjoys rare reach for an artist who could actually, meaningfully, dream up new music for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Such was the commission that led to Tell the Way, which will receive its premiere here.

See the full piece here.

Bruce Brubaker at Cued Up on Q2 This Sunday

Bruce: The BOSS (of Piano) Live from (Le) Poisson Rouge on August 9, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010 at Cued Up on Q2

“It’s rare to encounter musicians who are as devoted to teaching as they are to their performing careers — or vise-versa. Pianist Bruce Brubaker manages to straddle the worlds of performance and pedagogy with equal measure.

At home on international stages or in his New England Conservatory studio where he’s been the piano chair since 2005, Brubaker’s intelligent and questing approach to the piano repertory has won high marks from audiences and students alike. In this performance at (Le) Poisson Rouge, Brubaker gives the New York premiere of a piece by Nico Muhly in addition to works by John Cage, Alvin Curran and Philip Glass.

Philip Glass

Nico Muhly

Unlike many instrumentalists working under the classical music umbrella, Brubaker is passionate about both the new music specialist camp and the traditionalist camp, shedding light on some surprising perspectives. In an interview from New York Pianist, Brubaker recalled a Taiwanese youth’s account of the social implications of classical music during a tour of Asia: “If I tell my parents I’m going to hear a concert with Beethoven in it, that’s very modern,” said the young music fan to Brubaker.

Brubaker explains that this is “because fifty or sixty years ago in Taiwan nobody was interested in Beethoven so it really has a very different cultural meaning. There’s a very different read for it there than there is for us. I think a lot of young people in Asia are interested in classical music, but it’s weighted with a lot of meaning. It’s a sign of social aspiration and cultural aspiration.”

This Sunday, December 26th at 2p.m., listen to Bruce Brubaker’s full live concert recorded on August 9, 2010.