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Composer and conductor Erica Muhl (b. October 26, 1961) is Associate Dean and Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles.
Critic Martin Perlich interviewed Erica Muhl on KCSN in Los Angeles and called her "astonishingly brilliant" for her accessible, yet intense and beautifully-crafted scores. Their "iridescent palette" is (as critic Paul Hertelendy describes it) "...a contemporary foray into impressionism, mysticism, veiled allure and the shimmering colors of a concert orchestra". The color and expression in her music range from the febrile shock and defiance of "Consolation" (for chamber orchestra) to the sly, intellectual humor of "Truccorchestra", the latter conducted by the late Sergiu Comissiona.
2007 premieres featured a major work for String Quartet inspired by Beethoven's Op. 132, called "Prism 132" played (and commissioned) by San Francisco's Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. She conducted the premiere of her lyrical nocturne for orchestra "The Sea and All its Fullness" in 2006. In 2005, the premiere of her chamber work, "...to a Thin Edge" (commissioned and performed by the Orchestra of St. Lukes in New York City) evoked a strongly positive response from audience and critics. Other recent appearances include the premiere of her symphonic work, "Fleet," which she conducted at Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's "Sounds About Town" series.
She leads the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in her 2004 CD, "Range of Light" (Albany TROY 667 08G092). A second CD release, of Erica Muhl's orchestral music conducted by the composer, is slated for 2009.
Awards have been granted to her by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Whitaker Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Charles Ives Center for American Music and Opera America.
Erica Muhl grew up in Los Angeles, where her father Edward Muhl was the head of Universal Pictures—noted not only for his long creative partnership with Douglas Sirk, but also for his historic feud with Orson Welles—and her mother, Barbara, an author and opera singer. Her parents associated with Stravinsky, Schnabel, Stokowski, Rozsa, Previn, and Mancini.
Muhl trained both as a composer and conductor, with much completed in Europe. At sixteen she was invited for private composition study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
After returning to California to earn her B.M., she traveled again to Europe for graduate studies at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, studying with the Italian composer Franco Donatoni. In 1991, she completed her Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Southern California.
In Los Angeles, she studied conducting privately with the emigre German conductor Fritz Zweig (1893-1984). For the Italian opera repertoire, she studied in Rome with Walter Cataldi-Tassoni, a student of Mascagni. Muhl has served as Assistant Conductor for Los Angeles Opera Theater, for Seattle Opera's regular season, and the Seattle Pacific Northwest Wagner Festival’s complete "Der Ring des Nibelungen."
Erica Muhl is widely-traveled, speaks French and Italian, and is an avid equestrienne. She is married, and resides in Los Angeles with her son and husband.
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