Music and Motherhood – Both From The Heart

By Randy Simer

When we imagine a classical music composer, someone like Beethoven usually comes to mind.  We think of him working for hours or days at a stretch, slumped over the piano in a solitary room, obsessively coaxing to life the music that only he can hear inside his head.   But what if Beethoven also had to be a devoted mother and a Professor of Composition at USC Thornton School of Music?   Erica Muhl, one of today’s most highly regarded modern composers, juggles all three of those careers with great aplomb.  Orchestras at home and abroad are continually commissioning her compositions, which have received countless awards throughout her career.  But her number one priority is raising her son.  How does she find enough hours in the day?  “I don’t know,” Muhl marvels.  “I look back at the end of every year and think, ‘How did I do that?  Where did it come from?’”
Edward Muhl, Erica’s father, was head of production at Universal Pictures from 1956 to 1973 and her mother Barbara was an author and opera singer.   In 1965, a fire destroyed the Muhl’s family home in Beverly Hills when their Christmas tree ignited.  Erica’s parents moved her and her five siblings to their vacation ranch in Bouquet Canyon while their house was being repaired.  But the family loved living in Santa Clarita so much that they never moved back to Beverly Hills.   And though Muhl has lived and studied all over the world, Valencia is where she still makes her home with husband Mark and seven-year-old son Ryan.
Working in the digital age has allowed modern composers such as Muhl to reconnect with the old masters in one respect.  She explains, “The sounds that I’m creating and the instruments that I’m using are not digital.  The only digital part of my world is the transcription part.  What we do have that we didn’t use to is instant playback.  We’re now in a situation that some of our predecessors were two to three hundred years ago when they had access to orchestras for instant feedback on anything they wrote.   But I still write with pencil and paper.”
With her love of film and her father in the business, Muhl expected that she would work in the soundtrack field.  But after time, her focus changed.  “The luxury to write from the heart fully and completely and in the direction of my own choosing became very seductive along the line.  So I did eventually shift from the film scoring emphasis to the concert music.  But yes, the film world was a big part of my childhood.  I would certainly be happy working in that world, but I don’t know -blame it on Beethoven.”
For more information visit www.ericamuhl.com.

Photo by Randy Simer