"Young Composer Finds His Fuel In Restlessness"
The New York Times, March 11, 2007

An article about buzzworthy young composer Nico Muhly, whose Zankel Hall concert this Friday night (March 16) will alternate between his own original compositions and Tudor choral works by Taverner, Byrd and Weelkes. (The article explains why.) This interview was one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever conducted — if "conducted" is even the right word for a sprawling, two-and-a-half hour conversation that started over a fabulous dinner at Fuleen Seafood and ended at a table in Muhly’s sixth-floor walk-up apartment in Chinatown.

One note: For whatever reason, the article appears on the Times website shorn of its final paragraph. Since I don’t know when that might be fixed, I’ll include it here:

If Mr. Muhly has a signature sound, a style, it is not something he is eager to acknowledge or define. "The minute you’re like, ‘This is the grammar,’ it stops being a secret,’" he said. "Inasmuch as I’m in a daily process to uncover the grammar of what it is that I’m doing and use that, I also don’t want to know where it ends."

Muhly’s website is here, and includes many MP3 files for free downloading. His MySpace page is here. In addition to Muhly’s own concert, adventurous music lovers should take note of a concert by Valgeir Sigurdsson, who produced Muhly’s album, Speaks Volumes, and issued it on his Bedroom Community label, and Ben Frost, a guitarist also signed to the label, at Tonic on Sunday (March 18).