In the current issue of the New Yorker, Rebecca Mead profiles 26-year-old composer/conductor Nico Muhly, a Columbia/Julliard-educated musician whose works have been commissioned by American Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Orchestra, the Boston Pops and New York’s Saint Thomas Church. Additionally, he has collaborated with Icelandic chanteuse Björk, alt-country charmer Bonnie “Prince” Billy and cabaret crooner Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons), among others. Where does some of his inspiration come from? Why cooking, of course.

“Muhly learned to cook as a child, and he finds the alchemy of the kitchen consonant with the composer’s art,” Mead writes. She begins her piece following Muhly through his Manhattan neighborhood, searching for Bolognese sauce ingredients from different purveyors of fresh meat. Later, she watches as he chops garlic for the sauce in his sixth-floor Chinatown apartment, and they discuss how his prolific output of pieces is frowned upon in the classical music world. “It’s like, bad, or too popular, to produce a lot, but you learn such a lot by listening to a piece and, literally, not being able to stop it,” he says. “It feels to me more like food, in that sense. People need to eat. You may as well make them something to eat.”

Feed on this: Muhly’s video for “It Goes without Saying,” from 2006’s Speaks Volumes (Bedroom)

More can be heard on Muhly's MySpace page.