Nico Muhly - The post-classical alchemist

A graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School and of Columbia University, Nico Muhly spent years working alongside Philip Glass, and it's from his baroque minimalism – in apparent contrast – that Muhly's compositional structures seem to have drawn their deepest influence. But what also shapes his "universal" music are the Icelandic fascinations of Bjork and Sigur Ros, in a bold bridge between classical and pop brought to fruition on his new album, "Mothertongue"

by Livia Fagnocchi

In 2006 Nico Muhly was just 25 years old, already held two degrees, one from Columbia University and the other from Juilliard, had cut his teeth composing soundtracks alongside Philip Glass, and had nonetheless already racked up important collaborations. Bjork first and foremost. With her, Nico worked as pianist on "Medúlla", "Drawing Restraint 9" and "Volta". This was also Muhly's first contact with the tiny island with the best quality of life on the planet (or so a recent survey on Iceland claims, and given the talent coming out of it, we don't doubt it). It was that same year that Bedroom Community – the label orbiting around producer Valgeir Sigurdsson – released his debut album, Speaks Volumes.

Over the past two years, besides collaborating with Bonnie "Prince" Billy on "The Letting Go", with Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons), with Sam Amidon on "All Is Well" and with numerous contemporary classical orchestras, Nico Muhly found the enthusiasm to feel "hress" (an Icelandic word meaning "super-stoked" about something) and to translate it into music on his sophomore effort Mothertongue (again on Bedroom Community), decidedly more orchestral, more Icelandic and more complex than his debut.

Browsing the web, other things we learn about him are: Nico loves cooking, owns two ice-cream makers, and lives with his best friend in New York's China Town. For more, check out his blog, www.nicomuhly.com/, updated almost daily and packed with every detail about his artistic endeavors.

If the attempt to build a bridge between pop and classical doesn't quite come off in Speaks Volumes, where he has to contend with recalcitrant violas and a somewhat neglected piano, Mothertongue stands out instead for the poetic way it manages to combine classical, post-rock, folk and minimal electronica, conversing with Sigur Ròs and Bjork while still sounding unmistakably like Nico Muhly.

Speaks Volumes is split in two. A first part, up to "Honest Music", more experimental, less structured and drier. A second part, opened by the piano prelude of "Quiet Music", which feels more fluid and flowing thanks to the constant use of piano, and thanks to an intense, emotional and experimental closer like the gorgeous "Keep In Touch" (featuring, inevitably, Antony).

The idea we've formed of Iceland, and of its effect on musical colours, can already be heard in "Clear Music", after the long solo-viola introduction: Nico Muhly seems to narrate walks among nonexistent trees, encounters with amusing animals and moments of harrowing surprise. The other lead voice, alongside the viola, is a nonchalant cello, which, besides laying the ground for the two solo instruments, delights in unsettling it and making it unconventional. Above, an expert harp tends to a pleasant theme. For "It Goes Without Saying" there's a highly evocative video, where abstract images follow the lead of the music – minimal, with touches of "musique concrète" (samples of objects inserted in loops). Recognisable objects transform, fade, and shift with the anxious advance of the music. In the video – noticeably shortened – the theme emerges and shines through; on the album, however, it's easy to lose it amid the experimental outpouring. The same goes for "Honest Music".

The album's second half, more accessible, opens with "Quiet Music": its piano finally takes centre stage, and, as one might expect, the atmosphere settles into chord sequences that gradually drift towards the opening of "Pillaging Music". Nine minutes of chamber suite in which the piano, together with a xylophone and minimal electronic touches, creates a fantastic counterpoint of moods, now playful, now elusive.

At last, "Keep In Touch", the album's crown jewel. True, it opens with the acrobatics of a viola: that's the hurdle to clear before enjoying what follows – pure classical, pop and electronic emotion. The same viola – slightly distorted – paves the way for timid, distant, muffled vocalisations that turn out to be the unmistakable voice of Antony Hegarty. The remaining five minutes of the song are a marvel: electronic elements come into play, the violin's voice grows sharper and at times dramatic, a recognisable melody takes shape, occasionally stumbling into dissonant flourishes that lend a certain "twisted" quality to the sound's dynamic purity.

This is one of those cases where waiting until the end makes real sense: it offers a new key to the album, allowing you not only to enjoy a worthy conclusion but also to revisit the earlier tracks in a new light.

If Speaks Volumes was the bold, hyper-stimulated teenager, Mothertongue is the adult who has shed light on a viable path and acknowledged an undeniable talent. It's this second album that has undoubtedly won us over more, and just as surely seduced us. The intense orchestration and accessibility, first and foremost.

Mothertongue (2008) is a record that interacts with strings, winds, stringed instruments, percussion, samples and voices. The young composer tackles every kind of timbre and sonority, composed and orchestrated around extra-musical inspirations. The album is in fact made up of three "suites" that each develop their own self-contained ideas. This is the structural principle running through the work, even as it engages with pieces of varying length and cohesion.

The first part is "Mothertongue". Muhly reflects on the idea of the body as a "memory bank" and attempts to reconstruct an archaeology of the individual through the recollection of phone numbers, codes, states, capitals, and so on, taken up in the track through overlapping readings by a multitude of voices. The effect is one of estrangement, given the deliberate indecipherability of the recitation: the effect widens in contrast with a catchy orchestral music, built on an unusual "post-rock" bed of strings, and expands into a supernatural dialogue with Sigur Rós.

In the second part – "Wonders" – Nico Muhly interprets his own idea of the seventeenth century, one bound up with English colonialism, the exploration of unknown lands, volcanoes, exotic vegetation, eels and whales, drunkards and wonderstruck gazes. Muhly reshapes the narrative plane by entrusting the reading of Thomas Weelkes's (1575-1623) madrigal "Thule, The Period Of Cosmography" to Icelandic performer Helgi Hrafn Jónsson. His classical, timeless voice lightens the metallic sound of an uninhibited harpsichord, which carries much of the score.

His friend Sam Amidon is here, and it shows. As we've noted elsewhere, his voice makes all the difference, just as Antony's did at the close of Speaks Volumes. The opening of the third suite, "The Only Tune", sounds as if Bob Dylan were reciting over a composition by Laurie Anderson: the only difference being that here, instead of talking about the future and robots, Nico Muhly engages with the music of his childhood (he too – like Sam Amidon – grew up in a Vermont of fiddles, banjos and catchy folk songs with gruesome lyrics). The suite revolves around the traditional song "The Two Sisters", with its sweet melody and brutal lyrics (one sister kills the other and drowns the body in the river). The rawness of many of the stories told in folk songs is picked up and allowed to explode in the second movement, then rebuilt with knowing tenderness in the third. Despite the promising idea and the significant collaboration, the "learned", contemporary interpretation of folk material feels perhaps a touch forced (second movement). It's not bad, to be clear, but in our view the fusion of words and music in the first suite, "Mothertongue", remains unmatched.

Surpassing his already promising debut album, the young Vermont composer thus seems to have reached expressive maturity. While it's from Philip Glass and his baroque minimalism – an apparent antithesis – that Muhly's compositional structure seems to have drawn its deepest influence, his music constantly seeks to deepen and cross-pollinate, with even pop instrumentation, the language and poetics of the great American minimalists, a lineage that in Europe finds a possible parallel in the extraordinary work of Jeanette Sollén.

Contributions by Massimo Marchini