PRESTO MUSIC INTERVIEWS NICK & NICO

NICO MUHLY & NICHOLAS PHAN ON STRANGER

“Commissioned by the tenor Nicholas Phan and premiered in 2019, Nico Muhly's Stranger is undoubtedly one of the most moving new vocal works to come my way this year: setting texts including extracts from letters and interviews with immigrants from China and Sicily, the song-cycle explores what Muhly has described as 'different kinds of shared American stories', and received its world premiere recording on Avie earlier this month alongside two of Muhly's previous works for tenor, Lorne Ys My Likinge and Impossible Things.

The three of us connected over Zoom last month to discuss the genesis and reception of Stranger, the questions around identity and immigration which lie at the heart of the piece, the pleasures of working with early English (as in Lorne Ys My Likinge), and Nick and Nico's shared love of the writings of Cavafy, whose texts are so beautifully set in Impossible Things...”

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PM: Have you had chance to perform the piece live since the pandemic, and if so did it hit differently in the wake of the rise in anti-Chinese prejudice?

NP: The premiere was in Philadelphia, then after the pandemic we did it in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Chicago. In places like that you’re looking at an audience of similarly-minded white liberals who are nodding their heads in agreement, thinking ‘Yes this is very powerful and very moving’. But the last stop of that tour was in Scottsdale Arizona, and it was very jarring to do it there because Scottsdale is the land of Joe Arpaio who is this very anti-immigrant sheriff. Immigration is a big part of the political debate there. This is very close to where the previous administration was building a wall at the US-Mexico border.

It was super-interesting and intense, because in the last year-and-a-half the world has exploded and everybody’s angry about everything. When I was introducing the piece and explaining that it’s about how America welcomes (or doesn’t welcome) immigrants, you could hear these sharp intakes of breath in the audience as if they were preparing themselves to be challenged…they’d spent eighteen months arguing with people on Twitter about this stuff, and it kind of changed the way we approached it that day. You just have to lean into the humanity of these stories in order to find common ground with people who initially had a wall of resistance against the subject-matter, and that’s a very powerful experience.

It was a reminder of why being locked down was so challenging. Technology’s a great thing – look at the three of us sitting here talking right now from California and New York and Leamington! – but there’s something so potent about being in the same room and being forced to take twenty minutes or an hour together as opposed to relying on thirty-second soundbites. We share space and human energy and experience in order to focus on the things that pull us together as opposed to the things that pull us apart…