I Drink the Air Before Me is an evening-length score for Stephen Petronio's

dance piece bearing the same name. Inasmuch as it was celebrating Stephen's
company's 25th anniversary, the piece wanted to be big, ecstatic, and
celebratory. Our initial meeting, in which we discussed the structure of the
work, yielded a sketch: a giant line, starting at the lower left hand side of a
napkin, and ending in the upper right. Start small, get big! The rules: a
children's choir should begin and end the piece. The work should relate to the
weather: storms, anxiety, and coastal living. A giant build-up should land us
inside the center of a storm, with whirling, irregular, spiral-shaped music and
irregular, spiral-shaped dancing. Using these rules, I divided up the piece
into a series of episodes all hinging around spiral-shaped constellations of
notes. These are most audible in Music Under Pressure 3, and least audible when
they are absent, in the diatonic, almost plainchant music that the choir sings
at the end, the text of which comes from Psalm 19:
One day tells its tale to another,
and one night imparts knowledge to another.
Although they have no words or language,
and their voices are not heard,
Their sound has gone out into all lands,
and their message to the ends of the world.
I wanted the ensemble to be a little quirky community of people living by the
edge of the sea: a busybody flute, a wise viola, and the masculine, workmanlike
bassoon, trombone, and upright bass. The piano acts as an agitator, an
unwelcome visitor, bearing with it aggressive electronic noises and rhythmic
interruptions.
NICO MUHLY
I Drink The Air Before Me
Flutist Alex Sopp, bassoonist Seth Baer, violist Nadia Sirota, trombonist
Michael Clayville, double bassist Logan Coale
Young People's Chorus of New York
Francisco Nuez
Nico Muhly
Composer and arranger Nico Muhly returns with a new solo album jointly released
by his old pals at the Icelandic Bedroom Community label and Decca Classics. The
past five years or so have seen Muhly collaborating with the likes of Bjork,
Grizzly Bear, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Jonsi, Antony & The Johnsons and Philip
Glass gaining a formidable reputation on the international stage as a composerr
in his own right. There's an opera in the pipeline too (set to premiere with the
English National Opera in 2011), but in the meantime we have two new Nico Muhly
compact disc recordings to contend with. One of these is A Good Understanding,
with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the other is I Drink The Air Before Me, a
score for the Stephen Petronio dance piece of the same name. In his liner notes,
Muhly speaks of this music's relationship with the weather, and how he intended
the various instruments to take on their own characters: "I wanted the ensemble
to be a little quirky community of people living by the edge of the sea: a
busybody flute, a wise viola, and the masculine, workmanlike bassoon, trombone
and upright bass. The piano acts as an agitator, an unwelcome visitor, bearing
with it aggressive electronic noises and rhythmic interruptions." In terms of
creative ambition and all-round mastery of his art, Muhly's music is leagues
above the vast majority of contemporary indie-classical artists. There's no room
for schmaltz or string ensemble tearjerking here; I Drank The Air Before Me

engages with far more challenging and modernist concerns. Many of the classical
recordings that come our way tend to be derived from dance pieces, yet this is
one of the relatively few to truly engage with rhythm in a fresh and visceral
manner. With the interlocking, overlapping intricacy of 'Music Under Pressure 1
- Flute' and the panicked, clashing polyrhythms of 'First Storm' Muhly plots a
complex course, yet he still makes room for reflective tones when te time comes:
the commanding, stop-start horn swells of 'Music For Boys' prove to be more
elegantly melodic, while the bookending pieces ('Fire Down Below' and 'One Day
Tells Its Tale To Another') make good use of a very melancholy sounding
children's choir. A hugely rewarding album that's surely set to be one of the
finest modern classical releases of 2010.
Dusted Reviews
Artist: Nico Muhly
Album: A Good Understanding / I Drink the Air Before Me
Label: Decca
Review date: Sep. 7, 2010
Nico Muhly - "Kyrie" (A Good Understanding)
Probably more than any other modern composer, with perhaps the exception of his
mentor Philip Glass, Nico Muhly has gained some measure of prominence, or at
least name recognition, in indie rock circles. Working with Bjork, Grizzly Bear,
Bonnie Prince Billy
and even the PFFR guys on an episode of Wonder Showzen
has certainly helped, but there s something more as well. It just seems like the
right time for someone doing this kind of work to get noticed. This isn t to say
that Muhly isn t talented
lots of composers are though but that for whatever
we re calling indie rock culture (take that designation with a grain of salt),
there s been a steady progression of accepting this kind of music.
In the 1990s, there were a few bands like Rachel s and Gastr Del Sol around.
Strong classical and minimalist influences, and while not overwhelmingly
popular, they certainly set the stage for the acceptance of modern composition.
They took it out of its academic context by playing in rock clubs and on college
radio, and certainly Drag City and the overlap with the Louisville scene helped.
A few years later, the style became friendlier as The Decemberists, and then
Sufjan Stevens, made orchestral pop popular. At each stage, more and more people
loosened up their genre restrictions, more and more people stopped thinking an
indie rock band had to have a certain configuration
the standard
drums/bass/guitar set-up that had been the template since the college rock of
the 1980s.
Then there was Owen Pallett, playing essentially classical music as indie rock.
Again, it s not that people en masse are seeking out these musicians or that
they re extremely popular. The point is that they re popular enough and are
visible enough (Pallett s connections to Arcade Fire have no doubt helped) and
have deformed the definition of indie rock in this direction (while on the
other end of the accessibility spectrum, it was being manhandled into a Top 40
marketing term). The fact that Dirty Projectors are played routinely in Chipotle
should be an indicator of what is being tolerated by large amounts of people
now. Combine this steady progression with kingmaking websites with this kind of
music on commercials and teen TV shows, and it all becomes downright ubiquitous.
All of this has, in effect, made someone like Muhly more palatable to mainstream
indie rock audiences. His new albums A Good Understanding and I Drink the Air
Before Me aren t strange or academic or out there, even if the first recalls

religious choral music and minimalism and the second is a straight-forward piece
of modern composition.
Drink is perhaps the less interesting of the two, though still very worthwhile.
Muhly was commissioned to create a score for a dance performance for the Stephen
Petronio Company s 25th anniversary. Divorced as it is from the visual, the
score is enjoyable
the dancing flute at the beginning strikingly beautiful,
the ominousness throughout tensely driving the piece
but never really
distinguishes itself fully. In parts, assuredly, but as a full 50-minute
composition, it loses the thread.
A Good Understanding, on the other hand, is spectacular. Taking its name from
Psalm 111 ( The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good
understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for
ever. ), the piece was composed five years ago for Tim Brown and the choir of
Clare College, Cambridge. The piece is especially compelling for its embodiment
of and ability to communicate to the listener
religious or not
the
experience of the sacred, of having faith.
(Full disclosure: I have been or at least identified myself as an atheist since
high school. And before that, to be completely honest, I wasn t extremely
religious I went to religious school every Saturday. I had a Bar Mitzvah. I
fasted on Yom Kippur and kept pasadic on Passover.
but I never had faith.
Whatever it is, whatever faith is, I just never had it. My brain works
empirically. That s how my neurons lined up, how I was acculturated, and in this
way, I never really had the experience of having real faith. The best I can get
is proximity, being near things that radiate this quality. St. Francis of
Assissi s tomb certainly had this quality, as does listening to certain
religious music. It wasn t a decision I made to be religious or not
one
doesn t decide to have or not have faith
it s just something I found I
wasn t.)
The last time I discussed Muhly, I talked about the mathematical sublime,
essentially a feeling of pleasure we get from our minds not being able to grasp
artworks of great complexity. There s a measure of this in the feeling of having
faith, of encountering the sacred, and A Good Understanding beautifully realizes
this through the combination of minimalism and choral music. It s certainly not
the same thing as having faith, but perhaps it s as close as some of us may
come.
By Andrew Beckerman