February 1, 2025
Wrestling Strange Beasts
Composer Xavier Muzik
By Benjamin Pesetsky
By Benjamin Pesetsky
The SF Symphony premieres Xavier Muzik’s Strange Beasts February 21–23.
The world of composition often attracts a certain kind of person fascinated by the expressive possibilities of music but impatient with the daily grind of practicing an instrument. Though nearly all composers have some background playing an instrument, it’s a fundamentally different kind of creativity—creating a piece from the blank page, versus interpreting and performing something that already exists. Xavier Muzik, winner of the 2023 Michael Morgan Prize from the Emerging Black Composers Project, played tuba in his Albuquerque middle school in the late 2000s while teaching himself piano. But more than just performing, he was interested in the big picture: “I was really curious about the music we were playing, how it was structured, what made the moments I felt super excited about click in mind.” These are important questions for any musician, but only a composer takes the next step—“I wanted to deeply explore that and recreate those moments.”
Muzik, 29, went on to study at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita and at the Mannes School of Music in New York. As an undergraduate in 2016, he wrote a string quartet that was premiered by the Formalist Quartet in one of his first public performances. “I remember it being terrifying,” he said. “I was shaking the entire time, but looking back on it in hindsight, I feel good about what it was.”
Premieres can be nerve-wracking for any composer—sitting in a darkened hall, shoulder-to-shoulder with an audience taking in something you created. But anxiety has been an especially prominent part of Muzik’s life, something he addresses head-on in his San Francisco Symphony commission, Strange Beasts.
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Muzik, 29, went on to study at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita and at the Mannes School of Music in New York. As an undergraduate in 2016, he wrote a string quartet that was premiered by the Formalist Quartet in one of his first public performances. “I remember it being terrifying,” he said. “I was shaking the entire time, but looking back on it in hindsight, I feel good about what it was.”
Premieres can be nerve-wracking for any composer—sitting in a darkened hall, shoulder-to-shoulder with an audience taking in something you created. But anxiety has been an especially prominent part of Muzik’s life, something he addresses head-on in his San Francisco Symphony commission, Strange Beasts.
Story continues below...
Like many people, Muzik experienced increasing anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic, stuck at home and worried about staying healthy. Even after lockdowns lifted, it felt harder to go outside and socialize than before. He turned to street photography as almost a kind of therapy, the camera luring him back outside in-and-around his Los Angeles neighborhood. Some of his photos inspired his new piece, which SF Symphony Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct in its premiere this month.
As for the title, Strange Beasts is a literal translation of kaiju, the Japanese term for the giant-monster genre epitomized by Godzilla. Muzik imagined such monsters as manifestations of his anxiety and catastrophic thinking, something “to both fear and be in awe of while I was out walking,” he said. “I wrote into the music a sense of uncanniness—a sense of fantasy or wonder at the cross-section of existential dread and bliss.”
The Emerging Black Composers Project was launched in 2020 by the SF Symphony and the San Francisco Conservatory to spotlight early-career Black American composers. In addition to Muzik, the 10-year commitment has so far resulted in first-prize SF Symphony commissions from Trevor Weston and Jens Ibsen, with the latest winner, Tyler Taylor, scheduled for a premiere in the 2025–26 season.
Winners are also offered workshop opportunities to try out and revise their piece with the SFCM orchestra prior to its SF Symphony premiere across the street. Muzik brought a pile of sketches to a session at the conservatory last April, followed by a complete reading in September. SFCM Music Director Edwin Outwater led the workshop and commented: “Xavier’s music has great depth and drama and really digs into big orchestral sounds and gestures.”
In addition to composing, Muzik is politically active, having worked for Let America Vote (a campaign dedicated to ending voting suppression) as well as for Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign. He has also worked as a regular substitute teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District and as a staffer for the American Composers Forum. Drawn to service, he takes after his parents: his mother was a teacher in Albuquerque and his father was a firefighter in Albuquerque and Torrance, California.
Muzik also reflects on his ancestry within the context of being a musician. “Both my parents are biracial, so I have mixed racial heritage,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out what that means for my identity as an artist and a composer. What does it mean to be a Black composer? And what does it even mean to be a composer?” Opportunities like the Emerging Black Composers Project can be a path to answers. “If you give composers of color the room to express themselves how they want to express themselves, without feeling the weight of expectations or identity, it creates a place to be an authentic artist.”
As for the title, Strange Beasts is a literal translation of kaiju, the Japanese term for the giant-monster genre epitomized by Godzilla. Muzik imagined such monsters as manifestations of his anxiety and catastrophic thinking, something “to both fear and be in awe of while I was out walking,” he said. “I wrote into the music a sense of uncanniness—a sense of fantasy or wonder at the cross-section of existential dread and bliss.”
The Emerging Black Composers Project was launched in 2020 by the SF Symphony and the San Francisco Conservatory to spotlight early-career Black American composers. In addition to Muzik, the 10-year commitment has so far resulted in first-prize SF Symphony commissions from Trevor Weston and Jens Ibsen, with the latest winner, Tyler Taylor, scheduled for a premiere in the 2025–26 season.
Winners are also offered workshop opportunities to try out and revise their piece with the SFCM orchestra prior to its SF Symphony premiere across the street. Muzik brought a pile of sketches to a session at the conservatory last April, followed by a complete reading in September. SFCM Music Director Edwin Outwater led the workshop and commented: “Xavier’s music has great depth and drama and really digs into big orchestral sounds and gestures.”
In addition to composing, Muzik is politically active, having worked for Let America Vote (a campaign dedicated to ending voting suppression) as well as for Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign. He has also worked as a regular substitute teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District and as a staffer for the American Composers Forum. Drawn to service, he takes after his parents: his mother was a teacher in Albuquerque and his father was a firefighter in Albuquerque and Torrance, California.
Muzik also reflects on his ancestry within the context of being a musician. “Both my parents are biracial, so I have mixed racial heritage,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out what that means for my identity as an artist and a composer. What does it mean to be a Black composer? And what does it even mean to be a composer?” Opportunities like the Emerging Black Composers Project can be a path to answers. “If you give composers of color the room to express themselves how they want to express themselves, without feeling the weight of expectations or identity, it creates a place to be an authentic artist.”
