In Monday’s (1/24) Seattle Times, Michael Upchurch writes, “The title of the Nico Muhly piece the Seattle Symphony will premiere on Thursday is ‘So Far So Good’—a phrase that might well sum up the 30-year-old composer’s career to date. Muhly, it seems, is everywhere. He’s written scores for ballet works by Stephen Petronio and Benjamin Millepied, for film (‘Joshua,’ ‘The Reader’) and for opera (‘Two Boys’—Bartlett Sher directing). He has also collaborated outside the classical-music world, including projects with Björk, Grizzly Bear and folk singer Sam Amidon. … Still, the Seattle Symphony’s debut of ‘So Far So Good,’ with music director Ludovic Morlot conducting, has him excited for a personal reason he disclosed in an email exchange earlier this month: It will be the first chance his 100-year-old grandfather, who lives in Seattle, will have to hear his grandson’s music in a concert hall. … ‘ “So Far So Good” is my first nonnarrative orchestra piece in over two years,’ Muhly says. He describes the music as a contrast between something ‘loose’ and something ‘mechanical.’ ‘For me,’ he says, ‘all the music I write falls into those categories. There’s a kind of slavish ability to follow a recipe, to measure, to bake, versus an improvisatory, capricious looseness.’ ”
Posted January 24, 2012
