American music composer
Musical artist
Nico Asher Muhly (; born August 26, 1981)[1] is an American contemporary classical music composer and arranger who has worked and recorded with both classical and pop musicians.[2] A prolific composer, he has composed for many notable symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles and has had two operas commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Since 2006, he has released nine studio albums, many of which are collaborative, including 2017's Planetarium with Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner & James McAlister. He is a member of the Icelandic music collective and record label Bedroom Community.
Biography
Early years and personal life
Muhly was born in Vermont to Bunny Harvey,[3] a painter and teacher at Wellesley College, and Frank Muhly, a documentary filmmaker.[4] Muhly was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, and sang in the choir at Grace Episcopal Church in Providence.[5] He began studying piano at age 10.[4]
Muhly went on to study at the Wheeler School in Providence. As part of a dual-degree program, he attended Columbia University and the Juilliard School.[6] He graduated from the former in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and received a Master's degree in music in 2004 from Juilliard, where he studied composition with John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse.[7]
In 2014, he told the New York Times that he lives in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City with his boyfriend of several years, Ben Wyskida, a political consultant.[8] He wrote about his mental-health problems in 2015.[9]
Career
As a first-year master's student at Juilliard at age 22, Muhly began working for Philip Glass as an archivist, and later an editor, conductor, and keyboardist, for eight years.[10][11]
Muhly worked in collaboration with Björk on the DVD single "Oceania" in 2004;[10] in 2005, he was commissioned by Colorado Academy, a private school in Colorado, to write a song for the opening of their Fine Arts building.
In 2006, he released his first album of works, titled Speaks Volumes,[12] and in 2008, his second album, titled Mothertongue.[13][14]
In a 2007 interview with Molly Sheridan on NewMusicBox, Muhly explained that while he considers himself a classical music composer, that does not preclude his working in a variety of musical genres: "It's essentially like being from somewhere. I feel like I'm very proudly from the classical tradition. It's like being from Nebraska. Like you are from there if you're from there. It doesn't mean that you can't have a productive life somewhere else. The notion of your genre being something that you have to actively perform, I think is pretty vile."[15]
In 2009, Muhly did choral and string quartet arrangements for four of the songs on Brooklyn-based indie rock band Grizzly Bear's third album, Veckatimest,[16] and he worked with Antony and the Johnsons on the albums The Crying Light and Swanlights.
In 2009 Muhly was co-commissioned with Valgeir Sigurdsson by Works and Process at the Guggenheim to compose the music for Green Aria, A ScentOpera,[17] created and directed by Stewart Matthew, that featured scents as dramatis personae that were streamed from "scent microphones."[18]
Muhly worked on two commissions for the UK-based Britten Sinfonia, performed in January and February 2010. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival commissioned "Drones & Piano" for pianist Bruce Brubaker, which premiered in May 2010.[19]
Muhly's opera Two Boys, a collaboration with librettist Craig Lucas and directed by Bartlett Sher, premiered in June 2011 at the English National Opera and made its Metropolitan Opera debut on October 21, 2013.[20][21][22] According to a 2008 New York Times article, the opera is based on a late-1990s British case involving a 14-year-old boy taking on the online identity of women to try to get someone to kill him, without success.[23] However, in a 2008 interview with The Advocate, Muhly stated that the opera is based on the true story of an online friendship between two male teenagers, one of whom stabs the other.[4] The opera was reworked both before and after its 2011 premiere. The first recording of the piece, from the Met production, was released on Nonesuch Records in 2014.[24]
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Commissioning Club, Cantus, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Alfred P. and Ann M. Moore commissioned Luminous Body, also a collaboration with librettist Craig Lucas. The piece premiered on September 9, 2011.[25]
In 2013, he toured with Glen Hansard. They performed together with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Eindhoven and Amsterdam.
His 2008 musical collaboration, Confessions, with Faroese singer-songwriter Teitur was released in 2016 by Nonesuch Records.
Muhly contributed to the 2018 re-recording of David Bowie's 1987 album Never Let Me Down.
In 2020 Muhly completed a "virtual premiere" for the San Francisco Symphony during the COVID-19 pandemic, titled Throughline. The 19-minute piece features eight collaborative artists selected by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen.[26] Muhly also composed and recorded Trombone Phrases for Sound World’s Coronavirus Fund for Freelance Musicians, a project supporting struggling musicians during the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown. It was released by Sound World as part of the album Reflections (credited to Sound World and the Bristol Ensemble) alongside specially written pieces by other composers such as Gavin Bryars, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Evelyn Glennie and Sally Beamish.[27]
His composition for full choir and 12 guitars How Little You Are for Conspirare Company of Voices, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Dublin Guitar Quartet and Texas Guitar Quartet commissioned by Texas Performing Arts at The University of Texas at Austin was released on Conspiriare's 2020 album The Singing Guitar.[28]
In 2021 his composition Shrink appeared on Violinist Pekka Kuusisto's album First Light released by Pentatone.[29]
