Nico Muhly: To Stand In This House (Live) - EP

Nico Muhly is steeped in the Anglican music tradition—Howells, Parry, Britten, and even Jonathan Dove run through his work. The King’s Singers join with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge for a live recording of the American composer’s coruscating four-part motet. Muhly sets to music reflections on the world by figures with connections to King’s College, including Henry VI and authors Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie. The music relishes the King’s chapel’s acoustics, employing rich counterpoint, tiny harmonic inflections, and, in “In Later Life” and “A Finer Music,” short, beautiful musical phrases that bloom and melt into the stonework under a patchwork of King’s Singers solos.