Nico Muhly

Nico Asher Muhly (/ˈniːkoʊ ˈmjuːli/; born August 26, 1981) is an American contemporary classical music composer and arranger who has worked and recorded with both classical and pop musicians. A prolific composer, he has composed for many notable symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles and has had two operas commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Since 2006, he has released nine studio albums, many of which are collaborative, including 2017's Planetarium with Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner & James McAlister. He is a member of the Icelandic music collective and record label Bedroom Community.

Muhly was born in Vermont to Bunny Harvey, a painter and teacher at Wellesley College, and Frank Muhly, a documentary filmmaker. Muhly was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, and sang in the choir at Grace Episcopal Church in Providence. He began studying piano at age 10.

Muhly went on to study at the Wheeler School in Providence. As part of a dual-degree program, he attended Columbia University and the Juilliard School. He graduated from the former in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and received a Master's degree in music in 2004 from Juilliard, where he studied composition with John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse.

In 2014, Muhly told the New York Times that he lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City with his boyfriend of several years, Ben Wyskida, a political consultant. He wrote about his mental-health problems in 2015.

As a first-year master's student at Juilliard at age 22, Muhly began working for Philip Glass as an archivist, and later an editor, conductor, and keyboardist, for eight years.

Muhly worked in collaboration with Björk on the DVD single "Oceania" in 2004; in 2005, he was commissioned by Colorado Academy, a private school in Colorado, to write a song for the opening of their Fine Arts building.

In 2006, he scored the series finale for the MTV2 comedy show Wonder Showzen. That same year, he released his first album of works, titled Speaks Volumes. In 2008, his second album was released, titled Mothertongue.

In a 2007 interview with Molly Sheridan on NewMusicBox, Muhly explained that while he considers himself a classical music composer, that does not preclude his working in a variety of musical genres: "It's essentially like being from somewhere. I feel like I'm very proudly from the classical tradition. It's like being from Nebraska. Like you are from there if you're from there. It doesn't mean that you can't have a productive life somewhere else. The notion of your genre being something that you have to actively perform, I think is pretty vile."