From the outset of his professional path, Nico Muhly—active as composer, pianist, arranger, and conductor—resisted straightforward classification while maintaining steady involvement in both contemporary classical circles and pop or indie domains. His body of work encompasses vocal pieces, choral writing, opera, piano works, electronic music, chamber ensembles, and orchestral scores, along with film music for The Reader and Kill Your Darlings, plus recorded appearances alongside figures ranging from Philip Glass and Kronos Quartet to Björk, the National, and Paul Simon. Early on he assisted Glass with soundtracks such as 2002’s The Hours and Naqoyqatsi, contributed performances to Björk releases, and supplied string arrangements for Bonnie “Prince” Billy prior to issuing his first solo album, Speaks Volumes, in 2006. In subsequent years he sustained a balance among arranging, performing, and composing, issuing standalone works, motion-picture scores, and joint projects with singer-songwriter Teitur on 2016’s Confessions, with Sufjan Stevens and Bryce Dessner on 2017’s Planetarium, and with Thomas Bartlett on 2018’s Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music. Dessner also participated in the San Francisco Symphony’s Grammy-nominated account of Muhly’s Throughline, a compact concerto written in 2020 under COVID-19 performance constraints that limited onstage personnel.
Muhly entered the world in Vermont in 1981. Following completion of an English degree at Columbia University, he obtained a master’s in music from Juilliard. Among several favorably received undertakings was a cantata drawn from Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. Film scoring entered his practice with Choking Man in 2006 and Joshua in 2008. Facility across stylistic boundaries soon yielded partnerships with prominent figures including Björk, Anohni of Antony and the Johnsons, Grizzly Bear, and classical composer Glass.
Speaks Volumes appeared in 2006; Ekvilibrium, gathering earlier collaborative pieces, followed in 2008. Mothertongue, the successor to his debut, likewise surfaced that year, which also brought the aforementioned Joshua score. The Reader soundtrack, for Stephen Daldry’s 2008 film, emerged in 2009. Commissions expanded rapidly thereafter, as did requests for string arrangements from artists such as Usher and Antony Hegarty.
A Good Understanding, compiling choral music, reached listeners in 2010, joined by I Drink the Air Before Me, produced jointly by Dan Bora and Valgeir Sigurðsson. Seeing Is Believing appeared in 2011 and was succeeded in 2012 by three limited-edition EPs—Drones & Piano, Drones & Viola, and Drones & Violin—later assembled as the full-length Drones and issued widely in November. Muhly’s Kill Your Darlings score accompanied the film’s late-2013 release. He joined Kronos Quartet, yMusic, and members of the National for Richard Reed Parry: Music for Heart and Breath, issued in mid-2014. Later that year Nonesuch presented the opera Two Boys, performed by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
In spring 2016 Muhly recorded Four Studies and Honest Music with Angela and Jennifer Chun; the set was paired with two Glass works for Harmonia Mundi. A project with Valgeir Sigurðsson titled Scent Opera, described as “an opera for your nose” and incorporating scents, had premiered at the Guggenheim Museum in 2009 yet first appeared as a fourteen-minute recording in August 2016. He also collaborated with Teitur on Confessions, songs recorded with the Holland Baroque Society and released by Nonesuch that October. Planetarium, originally commissioned by Muziekgebouw Eindhoven and performed in 2012, received its recorded release on 4AD in June 2017; the solar-system-inspired work combined music by Muhly, Stevens, Dessner, and drummer James McAlister. The following year Nonesuch issued Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music, original songs by Muhly and Bartlett (Doveman) inspired by ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee’s gamelan transcriptions, three of which were likewise included.
Muhly reemerged in 2020 with the single “In This House,” a collaboration involving San Fermin and Attacca Quartet. That year also brought Sony Classical’s world-premiere recording of Three Continents, a cello concerto created jointly with Sven Helbig and Zhou Long and performed by Jan Vogler. In addition, the thirteen-movement mini-concerto Throughline, conceived with pandemic restrictions in mind (no more than six instrumentalists onstage simultaneously and no breath-powered instruments), received its premiere from the San Francisco Symphony with guests Dessner on electric guitar, Nicholas Britell on piano, and Esperanza Spalding on double bass. The recording, issued by SFS Media in 2021, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Orchestral Performance the next year.
