Nico Muhly

In this episode: Composer Nico Muhly discusses his hotly-anticipated opera Two Boys, which just debuted at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center this week.

Then, curator Sacha Jenkins and graffiti artist David "Chino" Villorente talk about a new exhibit at the Red Bull Studios in New York called Write Of Passage, which examines the impact of graffiti art on global culture. 

And the young rock band The Districts perform live in the Soundcheck studio.

Composer Nico Muhly hosts a witch's brew of selections from the New York Philharmonic CONTACT! New Music series, featuring seven world premieres commissioned by the orchestra.

Today, Benjamin Britten and other 20th Century luminaries. Is there anything better than his Te Deum in C? If you can make it through "...whom that hast redeemed with thy precious blood" without losing your mind, you are more dignified than I.

I live for cheesy mid-century choral music. Today: Herbert Howells and Charles Villiers Stanford.

Today, Henry Purcell and John Blow! Purcell is, I think, the last composer who was allowed to write such unstructured music; his long verse anthems and Te Deum are abstract, meandering and episodic pieces where each little bit of text is its own little étude. I think all of my problems as a composer — and all my delights — can be traced back to these capricious, difficult and charming pieces.

Choral music is my first love. Even though my voice broke in 1994, I still return to the emotional landscapes of Byrd, Tallis, Gibbons, Howells and Britten as a sort of home base for all of the music I write. In this four-part series on Q2, we explore a few centuries of (mainly) English choral music, ignoring, as the genre itself suggests, the better part of the 18th and 19th centuries. This is by no means comprehensive, but is, rather, my own strange itinerary through the pieces I adore.