by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY: If you find yourself in Berlin today, you can catch a performance by The Cleveland Orchestra at the Berliner Philharmonie. Franz Welser-Möst conducts works by Allison Loggins-Hull, John Adams & Sergei Prokofiev. No performances are on the Northeast Ohio agenda today.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Apollo’s Fire will present two 70-minute Baroque Bistro concerts in September, on Thursday the 19th at 8 pm at BLUE Jazz+ in Akron, and on Sunday the 22nd at 12:30 at Music Box Supper Club in Cleveland. “Soprano Mira Fu-En Huang sings ballads of love and despair, while dueling violinists Alan Choo and Hanna Bingham join with friends on cello and lute.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Mike Telin
Today we wish Nico Muhly (pictured above) a happy 42nd birthday. Born in Randolph, Vermont, the composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist grew up in Providence, Rhode Island where he sang in the choir at Grace Episcopal Church. After studying at the Wheeler School in Providence he went on to enroll in the dual-degree program at Columbia University and the Juilliard School.
While at Juilliard, Muhly worked for composer Philip Glass, first as an archivist, and later as an editor, conductor, and keyboardist.
Muhly’s musical influences are diverse, ranging from the Anglican choral tradition to minimalism. He has written for and collaborated with artists including Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, James McAlister, Björk, the indie rock band Grizzly Bear, Antony and the Johnsons, and toured with Irish songwriter, actor, vocalist and guitarist Glen Hansard.
He has received commissions from The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Tallis Scholars and St. John’s College, Cambridge. His more than 100 works for the concert stage include the operas, Two Boys and Marnie, both of which were staged by the Metropolitan Opera.
His 2020 work Throughline was written for the San Francisco Symphony and features eight collaborative artists who were selected by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. And his composition Shrink was recorded by Violinist Pekka Kuusisto and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra.
In June of 2019, English lutenist Elizabeth Kenny gave the world premiere of Muhly’s Berceuse with seven variations (for Theorbo) as part of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival. Prior to the premiere, I caught up with the composer by phone at his home in New York, and began by asking him what he found interesting about this commission.
Nico Muhly: I’ve written a fair amount for “historical instruments” — I hate to even use that word, so let’s put it in quotes — because of course if it’s being played now, it’s not historical. I’ve written before for lute and viola da gamba. For me, there’s something poetic in those sounds being tempered by modern harmonies, and the other way around. There’s a bit of time travel which happens in most of my work anyway — it always looks back a little bit to the Renaissance, Elizabethan, and Jacobean periods.
I remember him being a jolly, down-to-earth conversationalist as his answer to my question of how the commission came about reveals:
NM: Very easily. Liz emailed asking if I wanted to write it and I said yes. I wish there were a more complicated origin story to this, but that’s literally what happened.
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Click here to read the full interview with Elizabeth Kenny and Nico Muhly.
Click here to listen to Pekka Kuusisto play the first movement of Shrink.
You can listen to Throughline here and read more about the fascinating work and its all-star cast of collaborators here.
