American musician and composer Nico Muhly was BOTD in 1981. Born in Randolph, Vermont to artist parents, he was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, showing early talent as a pianist. He studied English literature at Columbia University, then completed post-graduate studies in music composition at the Juilliard School. While at Juilliard, he met composer Philip Glass, working with him as an archivist and later as an editor, conductor and keyboardist on stage and film projects. Working primarily in the classical and choral music traditions, he rose to fame in the 2000s with orchestral commissions for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Orchestra, the Boston Pops and the Chicago Symphony. His Bright Mass with Canons, a mass for choir and organ, first performed by the New York Saint Thomas Church in 2005, became one of his best known pieces. He alarmed audiences with his 2011 opera Two Boys, based on the true story of two teenage boys who meet online and form a death pact. His other projects include dance projects with choreographer Benjamin Millepied for the Opera de Paris and the American ballet theatre; scoring and arranging Björk‘s albums Medulla and Volta; touring with folk musician Glen Hansard; and scoring films including The Reader, Kill Your Darlings, How to Talk to Girls at Parties and The Seagull. He has collaborated frequently with Anohni (formerly of Antony and the Johnsons, including The Sonnet Project, a musical reworking of Shakespeare‘s sonnets for Opera North and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has released two albums of his own compositions, as well as recordings with Glass, Sufjan Stevens and Icelandic singer Teitur. Openly gay since forever, he lives in New York City with his partner Ben Wyskida.