THE FIRST vocal lines of brigham Young composer Nico Muhly�s fresh album, "Mothertongue," consist of a apparently arbitrary list of book of Numbers and addresses. Sung by mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer over aching strings and a distorted sub-bass synthesizer, the arrangement feels like a Stockhausen choke; a misdirection that subverts your expectations about how the work might move you. For Muhly, however, there's poetry in all that data.
"If you ask someone to name all the headphone numbers you can off the top of your head, it's going to be pretty interesting," the Manhattanite said. "When I asked the singer to name all of the phone numbers racket she knew, it was fascinating; it was her dad's office staff from 20 years ago, or a friend's number in Florence. You can tease tale out of anything. . . . On Wikipedia there are these lists of things like 'list of horrible ethnical slurs' or 'list of famous Canadian homosexuals'. That's such a poignant manner to direct the world."
Muhly is something of an aesthetic and emotional magpie. His consistency of work in his mid-20s -- a least sandpiper as Philip Glass' apprentice, composing debuts at Carnegie Hall and the Royal Academy of Music in London and collaborations with avant-garde pop singers Bj�rk and Antony Hegarty -- resists classification even according to postmodern ideas close to popular or classical music.
Tipped as i of the most relevant and promising new composers in formal classical circles, Muhly has assembled a tour for "Mothertongue," which stops at Hotel Caf� on Tuesday, that's a different brute entirely. The lineup, which includes members of experimental outfits Doveman and Stars Like Fleas, is essentially a genuinely imaginative john Rock band.
"We've got sampling keyboards and a lot of screaming. I'll be brush my friend's hair onstage -- it all plant out," Muhly said. "We've all known each other since the dawn of time, and we all have a very conciliatory musical intelligence service. It's like cooking at your mom's house, you know where everything is."
The advent of minimalism and the New York business district composing scene around artists such as Arthur Russell and Steve Reich long ago exploded established ideas about what music bathroom be. Muhly's career has been a pursuit to figure out what comes after every rule has already been broken.
The latter movements of "Mothertongue," a collaboration with folk singer Sam Amidon, pair Sigur R�s soundscapes and ambient noise with pastoral banjo plucking and cut-and-paste outspoken edits of lyrics from a traditional English murder ballad.
It's a fitting example of today's free-associative attitudes toward gustatory modality and influence. But even Muhly admits some anxiety about what's left to say musically and if it tin can do any real good in the world.
"I think the do of choosing to write music now is a political statement. The idea of doing it is so chemical group and risky," Muhly said. "You take the newspaper and think that 'What I actually should be doing, instead of piece of writing this laughable piece for a viola, is join the
