Sonic youth

PROMISCUOUS Nico Muhly’s versatility has resulted in work with Philip Glass, Björk and Antony.

Photograph: Dorothy Hong

However one explains Nico Muhly’s music, there’s a term best not used in his presence. “There’s nothing I abhor more than the word crossover,” the excitable 25-year-old composer says over a plate of lemongrass shrimp at a restaurant near his Chinatown apartment. “My skin crawls when I hear it. The idea of ‘thinking outside the box’ is so nauseating to me. The minute anyone says, ‘I want to break down boundaries,’ I say, ‘Who said there were ever any in the first place?’ ”

Muhly’s eclectic, fast-rising career does bear some hallmarks of crossover. Side projects have included editing Philip Glass’s movie scores, working as a session musician with Björk and writing arrangements for Antony Hegarty of the band Antony and the Johnsons. Muhly’s first CD, Speaks Volumes, was released last year on Bedroom Community, an Icelandic pop label. He recently scored the film Joshua, a psychological thriller that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

But rather than adorning his music with obvious pop references in an awkward bid for hipness, Muhly is gaining recognition for allowing other genres to flow into his writing organically, even subliminally. And that recognition is coming at high levels. On Friday 16 at Zankel Hall, he will join the Vox Vocal Ensemble for a concert featuring his pieces, along with those by 16th-century English choral composers Taverner, Byrd and Weelkes. The event is part of “In Your Ear Redux,” an annual series curated by John Adams.

Muhly took up composition while singing in a boys’ choir in his childhood home of Providence. During high school, he made frequent bus trips to Harvard to study with composer David Rakowski, who encouraged him to seek out different styles. Muhly subsequently attended both Columbia University and the Juilliard School, where he earned English literature and music degrees, respectively. He quickly discovered that his catholic tastes didn’t always win over professors and colleagues.

“I always felt like a little bit of an outcast,” he says of his time at Juilliard. “The music that I loved the most was American minimalism, and people there would think that it never happened.” He recalls his frustration with a class on 20th-century opera that neglected to even mention Glass. “There’s this general sense that at best, minimalism is beautiful but sterile,” he adds, “or at worst, morally bankrupt.”

An interest in early English choral music was similarly out of step. “While I’m sure no one there had anything bad to say about it,” he says, “it’s not like Cambridge and Oxford, where you can pop into a concert hall and hear Byrd or Taverner.” Muhly has channeled those sounds into his own choral pieces, including A Good Understanding, a work commissioned by Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, and evensong canticles that have been sung in Cambridge and broadcast on the BBC.

Far different in style are the small chamber pieces on Speaks Volumes, which Muhly created with Valgeir Sigurdsson, an Icelandic producer who has worked on Björk’s albums. Rather than trying to replicate a concert-hall sound in the studio, they layered track upon track, as in an electronica recording. They also emphasized elements normally concealed—the scrape of a violin bow, the woody click of clarinet keys, the pedals on a harmonium. The album’s climax, Keep in Touch, a plaintive chaconne that features the vocalizations of singer Antony alongside viola lines and trombone samples, will conclude Muhly’s Zankel concert.

Jeffrey Milarsky, a Columbia University conductor who has led the premieres of two orchestral works by Muhly, notes that it’s unusual for a composer to be so fluent at age 25. “He hears, he processes, and he can compose in any style he likes,” Milarsky says. “He’s fully aware of every new thing that’s coming out from contemporary composers.” But Milarsky also adds a note of prudence. “There’s a double-edged sword when you’re a composer of that caliber: It’s dangerous because you don’t often find your own true voice. Right now it’s wonderful little snippets of other composers. The world is his oyster.”

Nico Muhly performs at Zankel Hall Fri 16.