Nico Muhly is a modern composer with strong avant-garde leanings, a protégé of famed minimalist Philip Glass. Yet, the Vermont-born, New York-based neo-classical enfant terrible has manifold connections to the alternative music realm. Muhly has done orchestral work for artists including Björk, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Antony and the Johnsons, and Grizzly Bear, and performed with Final Fantasy. He's also worked, in a recurring fashion, with Icelandic studio boffin Valgeir Sigurðsson and deadpan folkie Sam Amidon. Under his own name, Muhly has written and performed a wide array of compositions, as well as releasing two albums. 2007's Speak Volumes, and 2008's Mothertongue. Whilst the former features often spartan, minimalist studies in single instruments, the latter is an astonishingly dense work, piling on countless layers of garbled, convoluted sound into "exploded" folksongs communicating the limits of language. Muhly spoke to me on 2008's final day, whilst brining pork in preparation for a New Year's Eve feast he was hosting.
Interview: 31 December 2008
When you were a kid growing up, what did you want to be when you grew up?
“I wanted to be a copyright attorney. When I learned that intellectual property existed, that you could copyright an idea, I became obsessed with it. I didn’t understand how you could copyright a book or a song, so I thought it would be amazing to fight a fight about that.”
Are you still amazed by that concept?
“I am. Every couple of years someone sues someone else for having ripped off their song, and I always follow those cases very intently. Now, it’s Joe Satriani v Coldplay, which is hilarious. The thing with Coldplay is: the reason their music is so successful is that it sounds like you’ve heard it before anyway. So, it’s almost like a constant intellectual copyright violation.”
When did you trade in your legal dreams for musical ones?
“I was playing piano like most kids do, and singing in a choir, and I had been wretched and random, and then over the course of about three weeks I got really good really fast. I think it was when I moved to singing in the second treble, which was a more complicated thing to find. All of a sudden, music opened up to me, and seemed exciting.”
What sort of things excited you?
“I was already well versed in English choral music, and I went through a haphazard figuring-out-of what contemporary things I like. I got really into Messiasen, largely because his scores were big and nice to look at. Then I heard ‘Music for 18 Musicians,’ the Steve Reich piece, and I fell madly in love with. These were the teen obsessions I carried to their logical conclusion.”
Owen Pallett [from Final Fantasy] once told me that growing up with a love of modern composition was like growing up with polio: that even after you recover, the scars forever linger.
“I think that’s only if you do it wrong. For me, I found it incredibly liberating. Because loving composition gives you the key of notation, which is hugely, hugely freeing, as opposed to something crippling. I know that there’s this belief that structural knowledge can be creatively limiting, but I think the exact opposite.”
Do you ever feel stranded between musical worlds? Embraced neither as proper composer and/or hipster-friendly artist?
“Well, I try not to think to much about where I may or may not fit in; to me, that’s 20 minutes better spent writing more music. But, I feel pretty accepted wherever I go. I’ve been pretty lucky in that I’ve found smiling faces on every shore. Whether it’s friends of mine who’re hardcore contemporary-composition violists, or someone like Owen, where he and I have an enormous mutual affection despite some differences.”
Working on the Antony record [The Crying Light], what were you trying to accomplish?
“When you’re doing arrangements for someone, it’s pretty simple: you want to design an outfit that makes them look as good as possible. You’re calling attention to your own skill as a couturier, you’re drawing attention to the person actually wearing the outfit. So, with Antony, you want his voice, his message, to shine as brightly as it could. My work was to make his voice as radiant as possible.”
Did you first starting working with Antony when you collaborated together for your first record [Speaks Volumes]?
“No, we started a little bit before. He asked me to make a couple of arrangements for a show we did in Holland. So, we started working on songs from his back-catalogue, and then we worked together on “Keep in Touch,” and then I worked on another concert. It’s been a back-and-forth deal.”
Next: "I really loved recently the way music was used in that film Birth, with Nicole Kidman. There’s that scene where she’s sitting there watching the first act of The Valykrie, and it’s just the best thing in the world. Because all you’re doing is watching her immovable, botox-ass’d face react to this Wagner..."
