Nico Muhly Quotes

The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people.

I think my generation is a lost generation in a way.

I'm trying to phase out my availability on the phone. People call you when you're walking down the street and say the most random stuff.

Because I had been in conservatory for so long, I was jealous of my friends in bands.

For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music. Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.

In really fancy restaurants they never point to the bathroom, they just gesture toward the bathroom or they'll lead you to the bathroom. The fancier the restaurant, the less pointing there is.

Writing orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality.

Every couple weeks I'll listen to Sibelius's Seventh Symphony, just to check in, to see how it's doing. It's doing OK.

I'm pretty clear about what I'm capable of doing.

Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little sad.

I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.