I Drink the Air Before Me is an evening-length score for Stephen Petronio'sdance piece bearing the same name. Inasmuch as it was celebrating Stephen'scompany's 25th anniversary, the piece wanted to be big, ecstatic, andcelebratory. Our initial meeting, in which we discussed the structure of thework, yielded a sketch: a giant line, starting at the lower left hand side of anapkin, and ending in the upper right. Start small, get big! The rules: achildren's choir should begin and end the piece. The work should relate to theweather: storms, anxiety, and coastal living. A giant build-up should land usinside the center of a storm, with whirling, irregular, spiral-shaped music andirregular, spiral-shaped dancing. Using these rules, I divided up the pieceinto a series of episodes all hinging around spiral-shaped constellations ofnotes. These are most audible in Music Under Pressure 3, and least audible whenthey are absent, in the diatonic, almost plainchant music that the choir singsat 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 theedge of the sea: a busybody flute, a wise viola, and the masculine, workmanlikebassoon, trombone, and upright bass. The piano acts as an agitator, anunwelcome visitor, bearing with it aggressive electronic noises and rhythmicinterruptions.NICO MUHLYI Drink The Air Before MeFlutist Alex Sopp, bassoonist Seth Baer, violist Nadia Sirota, trombonistMichael Clayville, double bassist Logan CoaleYoung People's Chorus of New YorkFrancisco NuezNico MuhlyComposer and arranger Nico Muhly returns with a new solo album jointly releasedby his old pals at the Icelandic Bedroom Community label and Decca Classics. Thepast five years or so have seen Muhly collaborating with the likes of Bjork,Grizzly Bear, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Jonsi, Antony & The Johnsons and PhilipGlass gaining a formidable reputation on the international stage as a composerrin his own right. There's an opera in the pipeline too (set to premiere with theEnglish National Opera in 2011), but in the meantime we have two new Nico Muhlycompact 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, ascore 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 intendedthe various instruments to take on their own characters: "I wanted the ensembleto be a little quirky community of people living by the edge of the sea: abusybody flute, a wise viola, and the masculine, workmanlike bassoon, tromboneand upright bass. The piano acts as an agitator, an unwelcome visitor, bearingwith it aggressive electronic noises and rhythmic interruptions." In terms ofcreative ambition and all-round mastery of his art, Muhly's music is leaguesabove the vast majority of contemporary indie-classical artists. There's no roomfor schmaltz or string ensemble tearjerking here; I Drank The Air Before Meengages with far more challenging and modernist concerns. Many of the classicalrecordings that come our way tend to be derived from dance pieces, yet this isone of the relatively few to truly engage with rhythm in a fresh and visceralmanner. With the interlocking, overlapping intricacy of 'Music Under Pressure 1- Flute' and the panicked, clashing polyrhythms of 'First Storm' Muhly plots acomplex 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 moreelegantly melodic, while the bookending pieces ('Fire Down Below' and 'One DayTells Its Tale To Another') make good use of a very melancholy soundingchildren's choir. A hugely rewarding album that's surely set to be one of thefinest modern classical releases of 2010.Dusted ReviewsArtist: Nico MuhlyAlbum: A Good Understanding / I Drink the Air Before MeLabel: DeccaReview date: Sep. 7, 2010Nico Muhly - "Kyrie" (A Good Understanding)Probably more than any other modern composer, with perhaps the exception of hismentor Philip Glass, Nico Muhly has gained some measure of prominence, or atleast 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 theres something more as well. It just seems like theright time for someone doing this kind of work to get noticed. This isnt to saythat Muhly isnt talented lots of composers are though but that for whateverwere calling indie rock culture (take that designation with a grain of salt),theres been a steady progression of accepting this kind of music.In the 1990s, there were a few bands like Rachels and Gastr Del Sol around.Strong classical and minimalist influences, and while not overwhelminglypopular, 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 collegeradio, and certainly Drag City and the overlap with the Louisville scene helped.A few years later, the style became friendlier as The Decemberists, and thenSufjan Stevens, made orchestral pop popular. At each stage, more and more peopleloosened up their genre restrictions, more and more people stopped thinking anindie rock band had to have a certain configuration the standarddrums/bass/guitar set-up that had been the template since the college rock ofthe 1980s.Then there was Owen Pallett, playing essentially classical music as indie rock.Again, its not that people en masse are seeking out these musicians or thattheyre extremely popular. The point is that theyre popular enough and arevisible enough (Palletts connections to Arcade Fire have no doubt helped) andhave deformed the definition of indie rock in this direction (while on theother end of the accessibility spectrum, it was being manhandled into a Top 40marketing term). The fact that Dirty Projectors are played routinely in Chipotleshould be an indicator of what is being tolerated by large amounts of peoplenow. Combine this steady progression with kingmaking websites with this kind ofmusic 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 mainstreamindie rock audiences. His new albums A Good Understanding and I Drink the AirBefore Me arent strange or academic or out there, even if the first recallsreligious choral music and minimalism and the second is a straight-forward pieceof 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 StephenPetronio Companys 25th anniversary. Divorced as it is from the visual, thescore is enjoyable the dancing flute at the beginning strikingly beautiful,the ominousness throughout tensely driving the piece but never reallydistinguishes itself fully. In parts, assuredly, but as a full 50-minutecomposition, it loses the thread.A Good Understanding, on the other hand, is spectacular. Taking its name fromPsalm 111 (The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a goodunderstanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth forever.), the piece was composed five years ago for Tim Brown and the choir ofClare College, Cambridge. The piece is especially compelling for its embodimentof and ability to communicate to the listener religious or not theexperience of the sacred, of having faith.(Full disclosure: I have been or at least identified myself as an atheist sincehigh school. And before that, to be completely honest, I wasnt extremelyreligious I went to religious school every Saturday. I had a Bar Mitzvah. Ifasted 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 worksempirically. Thats how my neurons lined up, how I was acculturated, and in thisway, I never really had the experience of having real faith. The best I can getis proximity, being near things that radiate this quality. St. Francis ofAssissis tomb certainly had this quality, as does listening to certainreligious music. It wasnt a decision I made to be religious or not onedoesnt decide to have or not have faith its just something I found Iwasnt.)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 graspartworks of great complexity. Theres a measure of this in the feeling of havingfaith, of encountering the sacred, and A Good Understanding beautifully realizesthis through the combination of minimalism and choral music. Its certainly notthe same thing as having faith, but perhaps its as close as some of us maycome.By Andrew Beckerman