Nico Muhly’s “Throughline” on SFS Media Album

This past November, KQED presented the debut broadcast of Throughline: San Francisco Symphony—From Hall to Home. As I wrote at the time, this program was the closest that the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) had come to a full-length concert since all the public places of the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center were shut down on the previous March 7 to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. For those that follow SFS, this was a significant occasion, because it provided the first opportunity to see Esa-Pekka Salonen in his new role as SFS Music Director. However, Salonen was far from the only focus for the occasion. He was just as interested in introducing his eight Collaborative Partners to San Francisco audiences.

We first learned about this extended partnership when SFS announced the appointment of Salonen as its new Music Director. On that occasion he explained that he wanted to work with a team of partners to embark on a future of experimentation by collaborating on new ideas, breaking conventional rules, and creating unique and powerful experiences in and around the concert experience. He assembled eight artists from a variety of different creative domains:

1. pianist, film producer, and composer of award-winning film scores, Nicholas Britell
2. soprano and curator, Julia Bullock, who has made social consciousness and activism fundamental to her work
3. flutist, educator, and advocate for new and experimental music, Claire Chase
4. composer, new music curator, and member of The National, Bryce Dessner
5. violinist, musical director, and artistic trailblazer, Pekka Kuusisto
6. composer and genre-breaking collaborator, Nico Muhly
7. artificial intelligence entrepreneur and roboticist, Carol Reiley
8. jazz bassist and vocalist, esperanza spalding.

To introduce these artists, Muhly composed “Throughline” on an SFS commission. The score consisted of thirteen short movements that would involve performances by both Salonen and all of the Collaborative Partners. The KQED program provided the world premiere of the composition. The video associated with that score involved a rich synthesis of filming, recording, editing, and some highly sophisticated post-processing. Since the partners were geographically distributed, all of that post-processing took place on a global scale.

The “virtual cover” of the SFS Media album of Nico Muhly’s “Throughline” (from the Amazon.com Web page)

As of this writing, the resulting video is still available for viewing on a Web page on the SFS Web site. However, for those interested only in Muhly’s score, the music is now available for download as an MP3 SFS Media album from an Amazon.com Web page. That page also includes a “Listen Now” hyperlink for streamed listening. As can be seen on that Web page, the total duration of the composition is eighteen minuets and 46 seconds.