Check the credits in fine print on recent projects by Bjork, Antony and the Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright and Philip Glass, among others, and you’ll find the name Nico Muhly. Over the last couple of seasons he’s become the It Boy of contemporary music.
But on his most recent project, Muhly’s distinctive name certainly isn’t buried among arrangers, conductors and musical assistants. He wrote and conducted the score to Stephen Daldry’s feature film “The Reader,” which stars Kate Winslet in an Academy Award wining performance. In addition to the soundtrack CD for “The Reader,” three other discs of Muhly’s music are currently available and he’s had premiers at Carnegie Hall and the Tanglewood Festival among other venues, and been profiled in The New Yorker. Not bad for somebody born in 1981.
The best aspect of Muhly’s score to “The Reader” is that it reinforces the film’s point of view, which is that of the male lead, himself a teen and 20-something for most of the action. There’s a lilting grace and simple romanticism to the music, which is lightly scored, mildly idealistic and charming. When the film jumps ahead a few decades and the male lead is played by Ralph Fiennes and the sins of the Holocaust arrive, the music is more generically soundtracky and also less present. But Muhly does deserve credit for never overplaying his hand either, with any attempts at faux Jewish folk song or generally adding more weight to the proceedings than is needed. In the final reel or two of the film, some of the opening strains return and the score again helps focus the viewer, reminding us that this is ultimately a love story.
In Muhly’s other recordings, his music is equally skillful, always clever, but never genuinely original enough that one can conclude he has yet found a truly personal voice. But what I like is that it sounds like someone in his 20s, in the best sense of being open and exploring, showy and eager. Save the grand statements for middle age.
Not that Muhly is a lightweight either. He’s a graduate of the Juilliard School where he studied with John Corigliano among others, and his blog (www.nicomuhly.com) is full of lengthy and erudite essays on all matter of topics, musical and otherwise (plus occasional references to his boyfriend).
Another Muhly film score is “Joshua” (which I’ve not seen, only heard the CD). Again, there’s lots of nimble, clever sounds, as well a fair bit of vamping (filling time) in manners that bring to mind both Glass and John Adams. Gradually the music becomes more dark and menacing and one begins to conclude that “Joshua” is some kind of horror flick, since Bernard Hermann and Stephen King both come to mind.
Muhly’s musical ideas are most front and center in the collection of pieces on the CD titled “Mother Tongue.” (Front and center on the disc’s cover, by the way, is a close-cropped photo of a man’s open mouth with a few whiskers showing around the edge. Recently a colleague, presumably straight, referred to that image as homoerotic, a comment that left me baffled. I’ll show you homoerotic!)
Anyway, “Mothertongue” has three works that bring together unusual takes on vocal music with lots of recording studio magic. “Wonders” is the best, combining rippling harpsichord writing, and trombones droning and cadencing in a Renaissance style, plus various rustling noises, while above it all vocalist Helgi Hrafn Jonsson intones some kind of poetic story. It’s like an old world troubadour lost in a spacious post-modern collage of sounds, both earthy and electronic.
An even more disparate collage happens in “The Only Tune,” which layers hillbilly singing and bits of banjo strumming with an electronic vista of sundry noises, rippling water and whatnot. The disc’s title track “Mothertongue” has layer upon layer of a mezzo-soprano singing and mumbling and is the most obviously referential to the avant garde of the 60s and 70s.
I’ve followed the contemporary music scene long enough to see promising 20-somethings recede into the field that’s over crowded with competition. But for now, Muhly is hard to miss and fun to watch.
[...] Reading the career of young Nico Muhly [...]