Nico Muhly

Muhly was born in Vermont to Bunny Harvey,[3] a painter and teacher at Wellesley College, and Frank Muhly, a documentary filmmaker.[4] Muhly was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, and sang in the choir at Grace Episcopal Church in Providence.[5] He began studying piano at age 10.[4]

Muhly went on to study at the Wheeler School in Providence. As part of a dual-degree program, he attended Columbia University and the Juilliard School.[6] He graduated from the former in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and received a Master's degree in music in 2004 from Julliard, where he studied composition with John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse.[7]

In 2014, he told the New York Times that he lives in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City with his boyfriend of several years, Ben Wyskida, a political consultant.[8] He wrote about his mental-health problems in 2015.[9]

As a first-year master's student at Juilliard at age 22, Muhly began working for Philip Glass as an archivist, and later an editor, conductor, and keyboardist, for eight years.[10][11]

Muhly worked in collaboration with Björk on the DVD single "Oceania" in 2004;[10] in 2005, he was commissioned by Colorado Academy, a private school in Colorado, to write a song for the opening of their Fine Arts building.

In 2006, he released his first album of works, titled Speaks Volumes,[12] and in 2008, his second album, titled Mothertongue.[13][14]

In a 2007 interview with Molly Sheridan on NewMusicBox, Muhly explained that while he considers himself a classical music composer, that does not preclude his working in a variety of musical genres: "It's essentially like being from somewhere. I feel like I'm very proudly from the classical tradition. It's like being from Nebraska. Like you are from there if you're from there. It doesn't mean that you can't have a productive life somewhere else. The notion of your genre being something that you have to actively perform, I think is pretty vile."[15]

In 2009, Muhly did choral and string quartet arrangements for four of the songs on Brooklyn-based indie rock band Grizzly Bear's third album, Veckatimest,[16] and he worked with Antony and the Johnsons on the albums The Crying Light and Swanlights.

In 2009 Muhly was co-commissioned with Valgeir Sigurdsson by Works and Process at the Guggenheim to compose the music for Green Aria, A ScentOpera[17], created and directed by Stewart Matthew, that featured scents as dramatis personnae that were streamed from ‘scent microphones’.[18]

Muhly worked on two commissions for the UK-based Britten Sinfonia, performed in January and February 2010. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival commissioned "Drones & Piano" for pianist Bruce Brubaker, which premiered in May 2010.[19]

Muhly's opera Two Boys, a collaboration with librettist Craig Lucas and directed by Bartlett Sher, premiered in June 2011 at the English National Opera and made its Metropolitan Opera debut on October 21, 2013.[20][21][22] According to a 2008 New York Times article, the opera is based on a late-1990s British case involving a 14-year-old boy taking on the online identity of women to try to get someone to kill him, without success.[23] However, in a 2008 interview with The Advocate, Muhly stated that the opera is based on the true story of an online friendship between two male teenagers, one of whom stabs the other.[4] The opera was re-worked both before and after its 2011 premiere. The first recording of the piece, from the Met production, was released on Nonesuch Records in 2014.[24]

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Commissioning Club, Cantus, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Alfred P. and Ann M. Moore commissioned Luminous Body, also a collaboration with librettist Craig Lucas. The piece premiered on September 9, 2011.[25]

In 2013, he toured with Glen Hansard. They performed together with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Eindhoven and Amsterdam.

His 2008 musical collaboration, Confessions, with Faroese singer-songwriter Teitur was released in 2016 by Nonesuch Records.

Muhly contributed to the 2018 re-recording of David Bowie's 1987 album Never Let Me Down.

• 2006 The Letting Go by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
• 2007 Miserere Mei (orchestration of William Byrd's Miserere Mei)
• 2007 Deus and Bow Thine Ear (orchestration of William Byrd's Deus and Bow Thine Ear)
• 2008 All Is Well by Sam Amidon
• 2008 "Með þér" and "Á meðan vatnið velgist" on Bestu kveðjur by Sprengjuhöllin
• 2009 Confessions, a multimedia collaboration with Teitur Lassen.[30]
• 2009 Various songs on Antony and the Johnsons' album The Crying Light[31]
• 2009 Various songs on Grizzly Bear's album Veckatimest
• 2009 Tricks of the Trade on Mew's album No More Stories...
• 2009 Year of the Dragon on Run Rabbit Run[32]
• 2009 "So Far Around The Bend" by The National on Dark Was the Night
• 2010 Various songs on Antony and the Johnsons' album Swanlights
• 2010 Go by Jónsi
• 2010 "I See the Sign" by Sam Amidon
• 2012 "Climax" on Looking 4 Myself by Usher
• 2010 String arrangements on Antony and the Johnsons' album Cut the World
• 2013 For Now I Am Winter by Ólafur Arnalds
• 2015 "Anecdotes" on Joanna Newsom's album Divers
• 2017 "Fortunate Son", collaboration with Villagers

As primary artist

Opera, chorale, and chamber works

• FM by Flexible Music (2009) (track: "Flexible Music")
• A Good Understanding by Los Angeles Master Chorale (Decca/Universal Classics, 2010)[33]
• From Here On Out by Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (2011) (tracks: From Here On Out and "Wish You Were Here")
• Seeing is Believing by the Aurora Orchestra (Decca/Universal Classics, 2011)
• Cycles by James McVinnie (Bedroom Community, 2013)
• Two Boys from the Metropolitan Opera production (Nonesuch Records, 2014)
• Filament by Eighth Blackbird (2015) (tracks: "Doublespeak" and "Two Pages")
• Dawn to Dust by Utah Symphony (2016) (track: Control (Five Landscapes for Orchestra))
• Variations by Mishka Rushdie Momen (Somm Recordings, 2019) (track: Small Variations)
• Three Continents Cello Concerto by Jan Vogler (Sony Classical, 2020) (with Sven Helbig & Zhou Long)

Film scores

• Joshua (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Moviescore Media, 2008)
• The Reader (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Lakeshore Records, 2009)
• Kill Your Darlings (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2013)
• Howard's End (Original Soundtrack Album) (miniseries, 2018)

• Seeing is Believing by Thomas Gould & Aurora Orchestra (Decca, 2011)

• Mead, Rebecca (February 11, 2008). "Eerily Composed: Nico Muhly's sonic magic". The New Yorker. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
• Muhly, Nico (October 5, 2007). "Walls come tumbling down". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
• Profile and list of published scores, Music Sales Classical