Nico Muhly on His Breakthrough Moment -- New York Magazine

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Beginnings: The Breakthrough Moment

Nico Muhly, Composer

"He immediately was like, 'We’ve got to do something together.' "

Maybe ten years ago, I was an assistant to an older composer, Philip Glass, which itself was a great thing to do, and through him I met Benjamin Millepied, who at that time was a very young choreographer. And Benjamin needed someone to adapt this old piece of Philip’s for a new ballet that he was doing, and so I got sent to Benjamin to sort of work on this project, and you know I was a dutiful employee and just did my job. At a certain point Benjamin realized that I was also a composer and just politely asked, �Oh, what does your music sound like?� So I sent him a bunch. And he immediately was like, �We’ve got to do something together.� Like: �I’ve got this big new commission � I want you to do the music for it.�


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