As a child, Nico Muhly was a chorister at Grace Episcopal Church in Rhode Island, and he began to learn piano at ten years old. He studied English literature at the University of Columbia, New York, and completed his master’s degree in music at the Julliard School, where he attended the composition classes of John Corigliano.

Muhly began his career alongside Philip Glass. On arriving in New York at age eighteen, he fed Glass’s manuscripts into musical notation software. He spent eight years in this role, which allowed him to gain a deeper understanding of Glass’s process. Eventually Muhly joined the lineage of American minimalist composers, along with Steve Reich and John Adams, whose influence can be heard in his operas.

A prolific writer, in his twenty-year career he has already built up a catalog of over 260 pieces. His repertoire is mainly comprised of vocal music, sometimes with instrumental accompaniment, sometimes a cappella. Indeed, pieces from the Anglican liturgy, foundational to the musical experience of his childhood, strongly influence his compositions. Muhly has sung many pieces from the Tudor period, including works by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, and John Bull, as well as twentieth-century works by Tudor-influenced composers such as Herbert Howells and Gerald Finzi. Passionate about the textures and moments of ecstasy that characterize the Anglican choral tradition, Muhly has made Tudor music a focal point. It is the body of work most referenced in his own compositions. A great number of his works are themselves destined for the liturgy, having been commissioned by institutions such as King’s College, St. John’s College, and Cambridge, such as First Service (2004), Bright Mass with Canons (2005), Second Service (2014), Spiral Mass (2014), and Westminster Service (2022).

In his catalog of vocal music, Muhly has achieved a rapprochement between art music and pop. Having been an arranger for Björk, Antony and the Johnsons, and Sufjan Stevens, among others, he has also composed soundtracks for Hollywood films such as The Reader (2009) and Kill Your Darlings (2013), and televised series such as Howard’s End (2017) and Pachinko (2022). In 2023, he composed the music for David Hockney’s immersive art installation in London, David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away). Muhly has also composed music for four ballets, following commissions from the American Ballet Theatre and the Paris Opera, among others.

Muhly has written four operas. Two Boys (2010) and Marnie (2017) were commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, Dark Sisters (2011) by the Gotham Chamber Opera and the Opera of Philadelphia, and Sentences (2014) by Britten Sinfonia. All of these pieces are inspired by real human tragedies. Two Boys recounts the tale of a murder and the relationship of two young boys who met on the internet. Sentences is based on the story of Alan Turing’s prosecution for committing homosexual acts, while Dark Sisters focuses on polygamy in the Mormon community. In Marnie, Muhly adapts Winston Graham’s novel by the same name through the lens of the #MeToo era.

He revisits the Book of Lamentations in the chorus a cappella piece No Resting Place (2022), starting a dialog between Jeremiah’s work and the Windrush scandal. Muhly draws comparisons between the experience of the exiled Hebrews and that of members of the Afro-Caribbean community from the United Kingdom who were arbitrarily detained and deported by the state in 2018. This process reflects the composer’s fascination with liturgical music and its ability to shed light on the contemporary world.

His works are produced by St. Rose Music Publishing, and his music has been recorded by Decca, Nonesuch, and Bedroom Community, a label of which he is a member. Bedroom Community also released Muhly’s first monographic disc, Speak Volumes, which was recorded in Philip Glass’s personal studio.