Born in Vermont in 1981, and raised in Rhode Island, then based in New York, the young post-minimalist composer Nico Muhly was, at the age of 20, commissioned by the Juilliard School to write Music in Transition for versatile pianist Bruce Brubaker. Later Brubaker and Muhly created a performance piece ‘involving electronic commentaries and “graffiti” overlaid on live performances of piano sonatas by Haydn’, to quote the Kings Place programme notes for Muhly's new piece Drones and Piano, which received its UK première on 19 May, with Brubaker at the keyboard. Again fragments of Haydn are used, ‘as well as lexia from John Adams’ Phrygian Gates, Janáček, … along with the eighth hymn by Thomas Tallis'.