Britten Sinfonia, Nico Muhly, Barbican

Nico Muhly is America’s hottest young composer. After completing his studies at Columbia and Julliard around a decade ago, he found himself the protege of American minimalist titan Philip Glass, and since then he’s cemented a reputation as one of the world’s most exciting, maverick musical minds.
Muly has completed myriad concert works for leading ensembles and orchestras around the world, and written a handful of exciting film scores. His work on 2013’s Kill Your Darlings, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg, is particularly brilliant.
That Muhly will play a concert at The Barbican with a brand new work and a pre-show talk is very exciting.
The composer is due to conduct The Britten Sinfonia (a wonderful orchestra in its own right) through a handful of works from his British musical heroes - he’s a self-confessed Anglophile.
We’ll here Dowland and Britten before Muhly’s new word ’Sentences’, conceived for the orchestra with counter-tenor Lestyn Davies. This work is inspired by the World War Two hero Alan Turing - the brilliant polymath who Churchill said made the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war - before he was prosecuted for his sexuality, and driven to suicide. His royal pardoning just recently, caught the attention of Muhly, who dedicates the piece to him.
The concert is sure to be musically dazzling: full of modern, exciting rhythm, high energy and a range of musical influences. We simply can’t recommend it enough.