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Nico Muhly and Nadia Sirota invade Woody Allen and Bobby Short’s turf to perform excerpts from Muhly’s soundtrack for “The Reader.”
Though he stands a good chance of becoming America’s most celebrated composer-performer since Leonard Bernstein, Nico Muhly is hardly the first classical dude to traffick with popular acclaim–or popular music. George Gershwin spent a good chunk of his career with a foot in each realm–William Grant Still and Bernstein, too, as well as Muhly‘s long-time friend and boss: Philip Glass. Glass found his way into the wider public’s ear during the 1970′s, even as Rhys Chatham, Pauline Oliveros, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, Glenn Branca, Gavin Bryars, David Toop, Jon Hassell and a host of other visionary shapeshifters from all over the musical map made sawdust of whatever remained of the barrier between “serious” music and its scruffier cousins.
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Muhly could make a living with his cooking anf blogging skills alone. The rest is gravy.
By the time Minneapolis hosted New Music America‘s 1980 launch, the old distinctions had vanished–or so it seemed–especially when David Byrne, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Glass wrapped the eight-day, citywide extravaganza with a finale that celebrated the marriage of difference and commonality with nary a rupture within earshot. Between the Art Ensemble’s set and Glass’s, the audience even got in on the act, spontaneouly whipping off a totally inspired a cappella piece that turned the old Guthrie Theater’s seating scheme into a platform for sustained, 360-degree, call-and-response improvisation.
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Speaking of cooking, eat your heart out, Martha Stewart.
Magnificent as the show was, it did nothing to dissuade nitpickers from wondering why Talking Heads’ leader had gotten, at most, 10 minutes on stage. The answer came not long after Byrne himself, in black tee and black jeans, strolled out of the Walker before the building had finished emptying. He didn’t go far.
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When the “Wall Street Journal” covers a composer’s New Year’s resolutions, you can pretty much assume he’s arrived.
Looking preternaturally alert as always, he proceeded to just hang out, whipping the already-giddy after-show crowd’s elation to a frothy fever pitch. Byrne chatted with all comers for a good long while before mysteriously heading up Hennepin on foot. At least one had the sense to pop the question. He answered in detail, and word traveled quickly.
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London, May 8, 2009: Muhly confronts Union Chapel’s out-of-tune piano, pwns regardless.
Already well under the guidance of John G. Chernoff’s magisterial African Rhythms and African Ssensibilities—and the spell of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s Afrobeat—he’d written 40 minutes of music rich with the Nigerian vibe soon to manifest on Remain in Light. With the exception of violinist Gary Schulte, who he singled out for excellence, all members of the string octet Byrne conducted came from either the Minnesota Orchestra or Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Again apart from Schulte, they found the stuff’s rhythmic sophistication so daunting, Byrne had to spend his entire allotted week here teaching them to properly play one short piece.
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Muhly and friends enjoy putrefied shark. Okay, maybe “enjoy” is a bit strong.
At the peripatetic festival’s 1982 Chicago installment, the problem wasn’t mild friction between youngish-old and younger-new guards, but a vicious open attack by old-new-guard, phony-anarchist/tyrant John Cage on new-new-guard, anarcho-maximalist Glenn Branca. Branca;s crime? Being “too deliberate” (read: “insufficiently random,”) for Cage’s druthers, to the extent that Mr. I Ching-Weenie did his best to destroy Branca’s career–and partially succeeded. For years Cage’s stamp of disapproval made the younger composer pretty much persona non grata among the feckless curatorial types still far too common in the nonprofit arts world.
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If more composers had a Nadia Sirota, their momentum might come to equal Muhly’s. But probably not.
But Branca, at least he recovers. New Music America limps through 1990, never quite reclaiming the unguarded openness that made its first couple years so lustrous. By the time Cage dies in 1992, he’s a household name hardly anybody listens to. Muhly is 10 years old.
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Like Muhly, Sirota gets around.
Even if Cage were still alive and in good health, he wouldn’t be able to touch Muhly; he moves too surely and too fast. The young composer’s long-time association with Philip Glass began well before he studied under neoromantics John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse at Julliard, and Glass does three things most contemporary composers don’t: 1.) sell records. 2.) sell tickets; 3.) collaborate with rock and pop musicians. His friend and employer’s willingness to work with the likes of David Bowie, Brian Eno, Suzanne Vega, Leonard Cohen, and Aphex Twin might not have had any bearing at all on Muhly’s appetite for collaboration, but it surely hasn’t hurt.
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“But can you dance to Muhly’s music?” Funny you should ask.
Though his partnerships with Björk, Antony and the Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright, Will Oldham, Grizzly Bear, and Valgeir Sigurðsson help feed the Muhly mystique, they’re only one wedge of a very large tomato. His contributions to the soundtracks for Joshua and The Reader have already won countless hearts, and he works the classical circuit’s classiest joints with a regularity that would almost certainly kill a less formidable composer’s career. One of Muhly’s greatest strengths is that he never repeats himself. Another is viola prodigy Nadia Sirota, who appears on everything he’s recorded to date. That she’ll be joining him at the Southern for the world premier of two new works hugely sweetens an already-intriguing deal.
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No rest for the best: Muhly hurried from Union Chapel to All Tomorrow’s Parties, then Stateside for a gig at Alice Tully.
