DIVE IN: Nico Muhly and the New

Nico Muhly is a much sought-after American composer and collaborator whose influences range from American minimalism to Anglican choral music. He writes for the world’s major orchestras and ensembles, having been the youngest composer that The Metropolitan Opera has ever commissioned, and has also collaborated with the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Rufus Wainwright and Sam Amidon. In 2019 Muhly will compose a new concerto for his frequent collaborator and friend, ACO Collective Artistic Director Pekka Kuusisto.

Missy Mazzoli is one of America’s leading contemporary composers, with one of her most recent premieres including Dark with Excessive Bright for ACO Principal Double Bass Maxime Bibeau and the ACO in February 2018. In You Know Me From Here, Mazzoli imagines a 20-minute musical journey homeward, “a trek through chair and loneliness to a place of security and companionship.” It is about “the beautiful moments when we find solace in a person, in an idea, or in music itself.”

Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi has attracted a lot of attention from the international music community in recent years. She writes that Birds of Paradise “was inspired by one of BBC’s Planet Earth films about the strange and beautiful birds of paradise. Their many different colours, the way they fly and the way the sound and sing…”