{"id":3345,"date":"2012-04-02T16:27:12","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T21:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/?p=3345"},"modified":"2012-04-02T16:41:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T21:41:02","slug":"very-briefly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/news\/2012\/very-briefly\/","title":{"rendered":"Very Briefly"},"content":{"rendered":"
I haven’t had a second to write here in the last month or so, but it’s for all good reasons. I’ve been putting the finishing touches on this song cycle\/instrumental cycle thing I’m co-writing with Bryce Dessner and Sufjan Stevens. It’s played out into basically nine songs with vocals in them, and two instrumental pieces (maybe three?) for the three of us, string quartet, and seven (!) trombones. We did a little workshop of it last week in Cincinnati as part of Bryce’s MusicNOW festival and are now in Eindhoven getting ready to do the actual premiere this friday. <\/p>\n
Getting real during the workshop:<\/p>\n
<\/a> I went to London for the premiere of my cello concerto, alongside Owen Pallett’s wonderfully detuned violin concerto, with Olly Coates, Pekka Kuusisto, and the Britten Sinfonia. Nadia and Sam and Thomas came along and we did a kind of abridged version of an 802 Tour set, which concluded with Owen, Pekka, Tom Gould (for whom I wrote Seeing is Believing<\/em>), and Olly joining us for a few songs, which is a sort of string playing dream team. <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Owen’s piece is one of these things wherein a third or so of each section of the strings is detuned a bit, so it has the effect of creating a blurred, melting sonority. The trick is to deal in the sorts of harmonies that melt slightly into one another; I imagined, while listening to it at its first rehearsal, the kind of first steps of defrosting something in a microwave, where the edges begin to assume a different color. It’s always weird to hear Owen’s violin writing played by other people, but Pekka is so batshit genius insane that it completely worked. <\/p>\n We had an extraordinary series of meals in preparation for the london concerts at St John Bread & Wine:<\/p>\n
\nIs this ur photo? If if is, email me and I’ll credit you!<\/small><\/p>\n