Minimalism, electronic fusion, and early English choral music don’t generally sit together comfortably within the same sentence, still less on the same classical disc. That fact alone makes Seeing Is Believing worth a listen, aside from these superb performances. Twenty-nine-year-old American composer Nico Muhly has an extraordinary CV for his age. Achievements include works being […]
“The nature of being a composer is being alone, and collaboration is a natural way to interact with people that’s both work and play,” he says. “I have to say that my favourite collaborator is always my most recent one. I’m doing a thing right now for Jo?nsi again, he’s great; I’m doing another set of things with Antony [Hegarty], who’s great … I don’t know, I love everybody.”
James Jolly talks to one of the US’s hottest musical properties A Good Understanding (Decca) I Drink the Air Before Me (Decca) Nico Muhly, not yet 30, is one of the most talked-about musicians of his generation. His musical sympathies range from working with artists as diverse as Björk, Philip Glass, Grizzly Bear and Antony […]
With a disc of Nico Muhly’s choral works also out this month, Decca seems to have taken up the music of the 29-year-old composer in a big way. This CD is devoted to the ballet score commissioned by Stephen Petronio’s company and performed in March last year. Muhly’s own sleevenotes reveal that his brief was […]
The new CD contains three works that were given West Coast premieres by the Chorale — “Expecting the Main Things from You,” “Bright Mass with Canons” and “First Service” — as well as the title piece, “Senex Puerum Portabat” and “Like as the Hart.”
Mr. Muhly, commissioned to write a short work to precede “The Corridor,” for the same ensemble and singers, produced an exquisitely eclectic setting of the Stabat Mater, a hymn that describes Mary’s sorrow as she stands at the foot of the cross.
Mr. Muhly described it as “very peaced-out Vermont starscape music.”
The night slowly descends into even more chaos. Folks hug. We go fetch another bottle of champagne. The fisting room gets occupied all of the sudden. Members of Jónsi’s band join us. At the very end of the night’s dictaphone recording, I later discover an eerie call to arms, Blair Witch-style. It sounds like it was shouted by the pair in unison, although there is no way of telling:
“GLOVES ARE OFF, BITCHES!”
Nico Muhly and Thomas Bartlett’s gay-straight back-to-back dueling-twee-piano shtick at the Kitchen.
Critics spend their lives throwing around adjectives after concerts, usually in the nature of good, bad or indifferent; and in my case, thrilling is a word that doesn’t surface too often in the vocab. But it did on Sunday at the Roundhouse. Three decades on from its glory days as a centre for cutting-edge contemporary […]