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On Nico Muhly's discussions of practicality in collaboration

This past Monday’s guest was American composer Nico Muhly, who has written in a variety of genres, including opera, scores for TV and film, and contemporary concert works. He’s also collaborated with some incredible artists . I was really interested in his orchestration and harmonic techniques, and how great pacing works together with these elements to create engaging compositions, regardless of genre. The discussions also led to more practical concerns regarding collaboration and orchestration. Nico first showed us excerpts from his opera, Marnie , during which he discussed some ideas for staging and orchestration, as well as some of the practical things to keep in mind in bigger collaborations. I really appreciated some of the staging decisions that he and the director came up with, including using dancers to represent men always looking at Marnie, rather than having the men sing outright (I hope that this is written in the score, so that it wil...
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