Boy Wonder 

Nico Muhly is not your average 27-year-old. An amazingly talented and erudite young man, Muhly has a degree in English literature from Columbia University and a master’s in music from Juilliard. In his young life (due mainly to very busy and artistic parents) he has seen most of the globe and immersed himself in subjects as varied as 17th-century choral music and the Arabic language. In addition to all this, he is already a widely respected and much sought-after composer, having had works commissioned and performed by the Boston Pops, the Chicago Symphony, and the Clare College Choir, and he has already produced two very distinctive CDs of his compositions (Speaks Volumes and Mothertongue), which display his diverse style and vast musical gifts. His work has been praised by many influential contemporary “classical” composers (Muhly prefers the term “notated music” to “classical”), such as John Adams. He has collaborated with musicians as far-flung as Björk and Philip Glass, and has just had an opera commissioned by the Met.

His latest album, Mothertongue, sums up much of what Muhly is all about. The album references American folk music, 17th-century English writers (including King James I), the fantastical travelogues of Sir John Mandeville, and experimental word settings that are reminiscent of the best of Terry Riley or Steve Reich. He mixes acoustic instruments, voice, and electronic manipulation in a seamless sea of sound that is both approachable and forward-looking. But most of all, Muhly's music is achingly beautiful. 

You were born in Vermont and grew up in Providence, R.I. What was your childhood like?
My mother is a painter and she teaches at Wellesley College, and my father is a documentary filmmaker. It was a kind of intellectual upbringing. But it was also kind of funky in its way. 

When did you start composing?
Basically, I started studying piano when I was 10 or 11. Really quickly, in the course of a couple of months it occurred to me that you could make music from scratch. Part of it too was knowing that there were people in the 20th century who were composing; it was enormously liberating…. [English 20th century composer Benjamin] Britten was one of the first people, and I felt like, Oh, yeah, he’s not that much older than my grandmother. 

Some critics describe your music as minimalist. Would you say you have a particular style?
The thing with style…the thing that I always say, which I think is a really apt analogy, is that talking about style with somebody is like talking about where you’re from in your life, like I’m from Vermont and Providence to a certain extent, there’s no escaping that. No matter what I end up doing, those things are true. I feel, like all composers who are being honest with their lives, there are a couple of things, stylistically, which are “home base,” and I think for someone like me, minimalism is very much home, just as Vermont is home for me, and similarly, English choral music is very much home.