About Meredith Monk “If Monk is seeking a place in the classical firmament, classical music has much to learn from her…She may loom even larger as the new century unfolds, and later generations will envy those who got to see her live.”

-Alex Ross, The New Yorker “…she is at once fearless, unique, uncompromising and yet builds human values into work that is never polemical, and has communicated across genre boundaries long before ‘crossover’ was even a term.” -Anne Midgette, The Washington Post “one of contemporary music’s great innovators.” -Michael Quinn, The Classical Review About Education of the Girlchild Revisited “Ms. Monk’s luminous Delphic presence, her extraordinary vocal range…are almost overwhelmingly memorable…Toward the end, a marvelously minimal dance…reveals a joyous theatricality that seems to contain all of life itself.” -Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times “No one can hold the stage like the diminutive Monk…The sounds she is capable of producing with her multi-octave range stem from a kinetic understanding of the whole body as an instrument.” -Gus Solomons Jr., Solomons Says “Monk’s work is grounded in her ability to understand the depth of one’s voice and the expressive abilities it has. In her music and much more, Monk makes her mark; simply put, she’s unique.” -Molly Ann Sheerer, Encore About Songs of Ascension CD “The range of Monk’s vocal idiom is literally breathtaking: a strangely beguiling repertoire of aviary microtones, robust yodels, insectoid whispers, and…dusky, low-range chanting…her wonderfully unclassifiable art remains grounded in a unique understanding of the flexibility and expressive depth of the human voice—and of creating new contexts in which to explore it.” -Thomas May, The Classical Review “…an innovative, provocative but enjoyable work, exploring the relations between voices and instruments…Tremendous stuff.” -Andy Gill, The Independent

“leads you gently and irresistibly to higher and higher planes…infectiously joyous. Songs of Ascension is compulsive listening.” -William Dart, nzherald.co.nz About WEAVE for Two Voices, Chamber Orchestra and Chorus “At once meditative, then playful, then meditative again, WEAVE is a feast for the soul, the ears and the eyes.”

-Bill Townsend, St. Louis Classical Music Examiner "WEAVE makes more imaginative use of the orchestra than Monk’s earlier works, integrating the instruments – a small orchestra dominated by a battery of marimbas and two pianos - seamlessly into the whole.”

–Sarah Bryan Miller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch About Ascension Variations: “Ascension Variations is a magical adventure woven from grand and pedestrian touches, and in the end the space itself is the star—or Ms. Monk’s transformation of it. For an hour, we’ve lived in a spiral, where up is down and down is up. It’s a sacred place.”

– Gia Koulas, The New York Times “Tapping into the wellspring of human emotions, Monk has produced an experience that is profoundly, inexplicably satisfying. Ascension Variations brings so many opposites together that the experience seems to be everything at once -- intimate and communal, spiritual and prosaic, innocent and wise.”

-Robert Johnson, New Jersey Star Ledger About Songs of Ascension: “Monk’s music retains its seductive buoyancy…and her writing for string quartet exults in a newly idiomatic command of the medium.”

–Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

“These beatific voices and strings, plus percussion and winds, weave an iridescent tapestry of captivating sounds- otherworldly and yet oddly familiar- while wending about the stage like participants in some ancient ritual.”

-Brett Campbell, Stanford Lively Arts Magazine

“…a major Monk work. The music [is] glorious. Monk’s most significant growth over the past decade or two has been as a composer…she is a great master of utterance…a listener feels somehow in communication with another, perhaps wiser, species.”

-Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

o 2 • 0 4

"Dancing Volce/Slnglng Body" is artful exercise for participants.

•

Javier Bardem elevates "Biutiful. " 4

Children 's book fair targets illiteracy. 29

NIGHTLIFE Girl Talk at the Electric Factory. 13

SHARON GEKOSKIKIMMEL

Meredith Monk, versatile creator, ends a busy week at Bryn Mawr with a show Sunday. Page 16

Aigner Picou (facing camera) warms up with other dancers in the workshop, open to those on and off campus.

• •

SHARON GEKOSKI-KIMMEL I Staff Photographer ging Body" workshop. At right, she plays the piano and sings with participants.

• cover story . . . . . . .

ARTS ABOUNDING

By David Patrick Stearns

INQUIllEH MUSIC CIUTIC

5 ~:~e ex-pecting a shaman. Instead,

they got something more along the lines of a big sistet:

Seeming smaller than when onstage, singer-choreographer-dancercomposer Meredith Monk patiently waited as a week's worth of her activities were spelled out to the 30 or so people

Meredith Monk, whose work defies labels,

has brought her many talents to Bryn Mawr_ Her week comes to a

close with a

mote or obscure. More than ever these days, she hugs strangers and deeply appreciates such comments but shrugs off what might be called "the shaman treatment," if only because pedestals create a static persona.

who showed up for S d her 1\Jesday work- performance un ay. shop at B,yn

While her work is fundamentally meditative - she's a devout Buddhist Monk has an eal~hy side: At some points during the "Dancing Voice/Singing Body" workshop - which attracted a predominantly female but not necessarily Bryn Mawr crowd - the vocalizing evolved into yapping and

Mawr College. Her ethereal, visionary theater works and films are being celebrated and discussed in this full week of Monk that leads up to her Sunday performance of Education of a Girlchild Revisited at Goodhart Hall.

"By the time this is over," she said, "you are going to be so sick of me!1t

At age 68, Monk has created a body of hard-to-define works that inhabit an area somewhere between chamber opera and performance art - pieces that use syllables instead of words, giving the impression of sacred messages from an unseen world. At the very least, Monk would seem to be singing in tongues.

"1\vo years ago, I saw her do a solo piece. The stage was fully in white and she was painted white ... and I felt like she was pelforming to me. Everybody felt that," said Sarah Konner, 24, freelance dancer who responded to the open invitation to Monk's workshop. "Seeing that actually changed the way I felt about performing arts. It was so special and emotional. I just had to come and be in the same room with her."

The offstage Monk isn't at all re-

wailing. A few departed early, often the ones wearing heavy eyeshadow.

That's bound to happen when Monk is invited into long-established institutions like Bryn Mawr, as she is with increasing frequency. She composes for full-scale orchestras, most recently the St. Louis Symphony. Especially since the 2002 death of her partner, the Dutch choreographer Mieke van Hoek, Monk must keep moving forward.

"When something like that happens to you," she says, "evelything is in a different perspective. You do what you really feel is important to give in the time that you've got left. In a funny way, you aren't afraid, in terms of what anybody thinks of you. It's imperative to follow your own path, to give as much as you can and have your work be of benefit to sentient beings. That's my feeling."

In fact, Monk was in the middle of Wliting Possible Sky for Michael Tilson Thomas and his New World Symphony when van Hoek died of a brain tumor. "I remember MIT said, 'Are you really sure you want to do

See MONK on \V18

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Music review: Meredith Monk weaves a spell with LosAngeles Master ChoraleApril 12, 2010 | 4:30 pm

Meredith Monk’s wondrous new work, “Weave,” performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale atWalt Disney Concert Hall Sunday evening, does just that. It weaves.

Like fish in a stream or cars (when they’re moving) on the 10, two curious vocal soloists, a chorus anda chamber orchestra musically, magically weave in and out. Like strands of thread, melodic themesare sown into energized patterns. Moods mingle like clouds that darken and evaporate. The sun isrevealed at the end in sublime radiance, followed by a few sweet plucked raindrops.

On the other hand, "Weave" may have nothing at all to do with weaving. The work was a co-commission with the St. Louis Symphony and the Master Chorale, and Monk had no title for it untilthe night of the score’s first performance in St. Louis last month.

But this much is certain: Monk is the super-seamstress of performance. Her career has beenpredicated on the fact that movement, theater, film, music, site, script are all part of a large fabric. I once described her as a leading American experimental choreographer and dancer who alsohappened to be a composer with an unmistakable musical voice. I immediately got a phone call withan unmistakable voice on the line correcting the order of things. At the center of her work and being,Monk insisted, was music.

It has taken time for some of us in the music world to fully understand or acknowledge herimportance as a composer. The perky rhythms, uninhibited vocal sounds, simple melodies,straightforward harmonies and happy rhythms she and her ensemble sang did once seem to imply a

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straightforward harmonies and happy rhythms she and her ensemble sang did once seem to imply amusical naïf. But she has always been an original whose music was informed by the movement-basedactivities she does so well.

With “Weave,” you can feel the waves. The vocal soloists -- mezzo-soprano Katie Geissinger andbaritone Theo Bleckmann -- are longtime Monksters. They start spinning the basic material, whichMonk has described as bell-like sounds, a walking theme and sonic cascades.

There is no text (there rarely is in Monk’s music). Nor do these solo voices always sound like voices;Monk is a master of turning the vocal cords into orchestral instruments. She uses the voice as aninner voice for sounds we might contemplate but wouldn’t dare produce in public. She uses it as anouter voice for sounds that nature and her many creatures make.

The chorus picks up its music from the soloists, becoming an extended body of extended vocaltechniques. The strings and winds in the chamber orchestra are also vocally used. But brilliant bell-like percussion is also a Monk sound. For her, two pianos and a celesta are sonic sparklers. Monk’smusic rarely lacks a perky side, and standard percussion plays a perky part in that.

The perkiness is not permanent, however. In this 23-minute score, one thing not only leads to thenext but also infects whatever it touches. Each section, each theme, each affect has its specific soundthat is easily corrupted by a procedure perhaps best described as a timbral caress.

Monk’s instrumental writing (she shares the orchestration with Allison Sniffin) is not an especiallygreat challenge for a traditional orchestra, but her vocal writing is a real stretch for traditional chorus.And the Grant Gershon-trained Master Chorale, which first collaborated with Monk four years ago inconjunction with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Minimalist Jukebox festival, is the ensemble thathas mastered her extended techniques best. One of the great thrills of “Weave” Sunday was watchingthe chorus members lose their old self-consciousness as they gained new techniques.

Gershon set the scene for “Weave” with Arvo Pärt’s mystically intense “Miserere,” for five vocalsoloists, a chorus that sings very little and an chamber ensemble that plays very little. The lights weredarkened. Fire officials frown on incense in the concert hall, but Gershon’s sensitive performancetransformed it into a sacred site anyway.

After intermission, Gershon led a lively account of Monk’s “Night” as well as excerpts from “Songs ofAscension,” her recent collaboration with visual artist Ann Hamilton. “Night” is the rare Monk piecewith specific musical references – here to Middle European music. It is cleverly orchestrated bySniffin, who was also one of the eight singers, but this is a glittery direction I’m glad Monk has notpursued.

In “Songs of Ascension,” Monk finally took the stage, seated on the floor singing and accompanyingherself on an Indian squeezebox. A small instrumental ensemble, conducted by Gershon, walked onperforming, as did the chorus. This is Monk’s music at its most primal and affecting.

“Ascension” ends with the performers prostrate. In Monk’s world, up is down, just as time and space,sight and sound, movement and music are all woven into the same tapestry.

-- Mark Swed

Photo: Meredith Monk with singers at the end of "Songs of Ascension" Sunday night in Walt DisneyConcert Hall. Credit: Axel Koester / Los Angeles Times

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Comments (1)

It was a terrific evening but no, it didn't end with the performers prostrate. It ended with some of theperformers supine. I think there's going to be another telephone call with an unmistakable voice onthe line, asking, "Sir, are there ANY copy editors at the LA Times -- ?" Thank you, Master Chorale, forbold programming!

Posted by: lbard | April 12, 2010 at 08:22 PM

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Orchestra offers an imaginative weave By sarah Bryan Miller ST. LOUtS PO$T-DISPATOI Ol,l l<4{2(llO

DINING our TV

There's always an air of anticipation to the premiere of a new work. In the case of the new work by Meredith Monk, commissioned for music director David Robertson and

the St. Louis Symphony Orehestra by Grand Center, that was heightened by the fact that it had no name until this week.

Earlier, Monk toyed with calling it "What the Stream Knows." It's now officially "WEAVE for two voices, chamber o.-.;hestra and chorus," with voices and orehestra acting as warp and woof on the sonic loom of Monk's creation.

Monk's music has elements of minimalism, built on a foundat ion of vocalism, rather

than instrumentation. Voices sound wordlessly or on nonsense syllables, sounding al times more like a gamelan orchestra than singing. It's tonal and lovely, exotic and

unexpected.

"Weave" makes more imaginative use of the orchestra than Monk's earlier works,

integrating the instruments - a small orehestra dominated by a battery of marimbas and two pianos - seamlessly into the whole.

It opens with a single male voice singing a three-note pattern. A woman's voice joins

him, then the chorus. There's music-box melody for piano and marimba, and a scattered conversation between instruments. It builds, then tapers, in the moment,

with fascination that holds the aud ience suspended.

"Weave" received exemplary perfonnances from aU concerned, starting with merrosoprano Katie Geissinger and baritone Then Bleckmann, members of Monk's vocal

ensemble. Members of Amy Kaiser's St. Louis Symphony Chorus rose to the challenge

of an unfamiliar vocal idiom.

Robertson, who also did standup comedy during a pair ofintenninable stage rejiggerings, and his instrumentalists were the ideal collaborators here and in the first

piece of the second half, Monk's "Night." "Night," composed in 1996 as a reaction to the Balkan conflict, has an ominous and tragic sound, with dark undercurrents and a

sense of unease.

"Night" paired four of Monk's ensemble - soprano Allison Sniffiin, Geissinger, tenor

Tom Bogdan and Bleckrnann - with fou r members of the Symphony Chorus, soprano Marella Briones, alto Debby Lennon, tenor Brendan Hemmerle and baritone Derrick Fox - in a musical tour de force that showed the singers' versatility.

So did "Panda Chant II ," which in which Monk herself led the vocal forces before "Weave," "Panda Chant" is just pure catchy fun, with chant building to add clapping,

dance steps and some ululation, in an engaging musical and visual whole.

The concert opened with Stravinsky's haunting "Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa

ad CD Annum," its lean lines memorably shared by brass and string choirs. 1\ ended with a really brilliant reading of Bela Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. With its mirror-image string orehestras divided by the piano, it brought the

concert full circle.

The most unique Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra concert of the season was celebrated Saturday night by a small and appreciative house at Powell Symphony Hall in midtown St. Louis.

The key work of the evening—a world premiere composition—didn’t have a title until the afternoon of the night it was performed. Its perfect name was announced from the podium by music director and conductor David Robertson.

Copyright © 2009 Clarity Digital Group LLC d/b/a Examiner.com. All Rights reserved.

World-premiere work by Meredith Monk is the centerpiece of the most unique concert of SLSO's season By St. Louis Classical Music Examiner, Bill TownsendMarch 14, 1:10 AM

this:

Composer Meredith MonkCourtesy Meredith Monk

With voices used as instruments interwoven with the traditional instruments of a chamber orchestra, it is appropriate that the composer decided to call her work: “Weave for Two Voices, Chamber Orchestra and Chorus.”

“I wrote it on a piece of paper and gave it to David this afternoon,” composer Meredith Monk said immediately after the concert. “I struggled with the name.”

The work, however, contains no struggle. It is organic. At once meditative, then playful, then meditative again, “Weave” is a feast for the soul, the ears and the eyes. Monk uses voices to make musical sounds. They don’t sing words. While not mimicking instruments, she shows the world that voices are indeed instruments of their own kind.

The result is spiritually moving.

Baritone Theo Bleckmann and mezzo-soprano Katie Geissinger were the two key singers who sometimes sounded like sweet birds, which gave the piece a gripping sensuality, too. Adding to the joy were members of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

Unlike many choral and orchestral works, this one had no star. Like each stitch in a woven afghan, every note from every musician

mattered equally. This piece by Monk was a collective unlike any piece you’ll ever hear.

“Weave” earned a standing ovation from the audience, which also warmly accepted two other pieces by the 67-year-old New Yorker, who performed in the first work (“Panda Chant II”) with her Vocal Ensemble, took a solo bow after “Weave,” and received another standing ovation from her station in the hall’s Dress Circle following the stunning, otherworldly performance of “Night.”

The bookends of this exceptional concert were by Stravinsky at the beginning, Bartok at the end.

Igor Stravinsky’s “Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD Annum” is an homage to the great madrigal composer Carlo Gesualdo.

In 1960, Stravinsky decided to mark the 400th anniversary of the Italian composer’s birth by taking some of his madrigals, removing the words and adding the modernist touch. The result is a songfest without words. It was just the right setup for the works of Monk.

Bartok’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” was, at the ripe young age of 74, the oldest work on the program. It illustrated Bartok’s genius.

Copyright © 2009 Clarity Digital Group LLC d/b/a Examiner.com. All Rights reserved.

Written before stereo, the composition called for half of the string sections to be on one side of the stage and half on the other side. In the middle were the piano and the celesta.

The result was as close to stereophonic sound as you can get without the appropriate electronic device. Brilliant.

Robertson is one of the great Bartok interpreters. Each season you’ll find at least one work by Hungary’s greatest composer on the SLSO’s schedule.

And while Bela Bartok wasn’t always appreciated in his own time in his own country, Robertson is making sure that this master composer gets his just deserts in our town.

St. Louis Classical Music ExaminerBill TownsendCourtesy Meredith Monk

To see more, visit us at examiner.com.

Copyright © 2009 Clarity Digital Group LLC d/b/a Examiner.com. All Rights reserved.

FRIDA'!: OCTOBER23, 2009

Bending Melodies on the Way to an Otherworldly Quest

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‘Songs of Ascension’ proves accomplished in movement and music at REDCAT.By MARK SWED, Music Critic (mark.swed@latimes.com)October 31, 2008

When artist Ann Hamilton completed building what she called an acoustic tower in Sonoma County last year, Meredith Monk was on hand for the inauguration. She sent up the tower’s central spiral staircase vocalists, a string quartet, a woodwind player and a percussionist, singing and playing as they slowly ascended, their sounds reverberating in the eight-story silo and producing what one imagines to have been a magical, site-specific “Climb Every Mountain” of modern art.

That Hamilton tower is the DNA of “Songs of Ascension.” The work is billed as a collaboration between a composer/choreogra-pher/theater artist and a visual artist. But at REDCAT on Wednes-day night, the only physical evidence of Hamilton’s involvement was a video projection of murky images revolving around the theater. Essentially this is a major Monk work. Music is its center. The tower is left to the imagination, even though the use of space is still a signifi-cant aspect of the piece.

Workshopped at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, premiered at Stanford University earlier this month and intended for the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in fall 2009, “Songs of Ascension” felt particularly well suited Wednesday for the intimate, flexible REDCAT. The performance began with a lamp swaying back and forth over the stage while a chorus -- drawn from CalArts, one of the work’s sponsors -- droned in surround sound, the singers placed in nooks between the acoustical tiles that line the walls of the black box. An electronic squeal here, some clattery percussion there, dissuaded the ear from an impression of anything New Age-y.

What happened for the next 70 minutes proved just the other side of understandable. Neither music nor movement was exactly ascensional. Instead, the feeling was more preparation for ascent at, say, an Everest base camp. No one seemed quite acclimated to the altitude, so things got a little strange.

Monk’s music and movement are one process. Her use of extended vocal techniques is not so much the invention of new sounds as a means of extending the voice into the rest of the body. All those breathy ha-ha-has and hee-hee-hees are as much physical gestures as they are musical ones.

Pure movement in “Songs of Ascension” is of two types. The performers continually found new configurations onstage, which meant a mobile string quartet (the cellist raised her peg so she too could be part of this irregular marching band). There were also dance solos made of twitching motions. The first twitches came from Ellen Fisher, a member of Monk’s outstanding six-member ensemble, who errati-cally flashed semaphore signals, as if summoning climbers. At evening’s end, Todd Reynolds (the leader of the Todd Reynolds Quartet) played his violin lying flat on his back, which was, as far as I know, a first.

Hamilton’s revolving video projections included a large roving eye as well as a horse and rider in silhouette and a man in motion. They evoked nothing in particular but filled the space with an apt odd aura.

The music was glorious. Monk’s most significant growth over the past decade or two has been as a composer. Her movement and theatrical ideas, however engaging, don’t surprise nearly as much anymore as her music does. She’s still the ultimate Minimalist, putting a few notes together in limited rhythmic and contrapuntal combinations. But she is a great master of utterance. A singer can chirp a few flamboyant high notes and a listener feels not as if listening to bird-like song but somehow in communication with another, perhaps wiser, species.

The quartet music was simple too, but mesmerizing. String instruments were made to sound like voices, just as voices were made to sound like string instruments. And to prove the unity point, one member of Monk’s ensemble, Allison Sniffin, both played violin and sang. Flexing the arms and the vocal cords became a single gesture.

Ascension itself was only alluded to. Sung sliding tones and glissandos played by the string quartet tumbled and tumbled some more, like sound descending from great heights.

At the end, Monk turned to a more traditional technique for producing the sense of looking heavenward -- a catchy repeated four-note rising scale in the quartet. The performers enacted a lavish processional. Singers riffed on and around the ascending motif. John Hollenbeck banged percussion attached to his body. Bohdan Hilash provided sonic depth on the bass clarinet. The chorus, in its cubicles, added more layers of joyful counterpoint.

Activity ceased with everyone lying on the floor for lights out, ready for the ascent. When the lights came back on, I expected to see the mountain.

Entertainment | MUSIC REVIEW

‘Songs of Ascension’ at REDCAT

Barbara Davidson, Los Angeles Times Ellen Fisher dances dur-ing Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton’s “Songs of Ascension.”

ll-iE NEW YOR.KER SUMMER FlcnON ISSUE

JUNE 6 , 15, 2009

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

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The composer, vocalist, dancer, and director Meredith Monk is now an incredible sixty-six yean old. To see her performas I did this past March, at the Guggenheim, in • Ascension Variations: a revival of her 1%9 theatre

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piece "Juice--is to watch an artist who seems never to have been made moribund

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by the strictures imposed by adulthood. Monk's fecund imagination dwells in the garden of girlhood, burrowing beneath what society demands of females beginning in their youth-an almost silent • • • ruceness -to express her inner life. {Indeed, one oCher most moving perfonnances is 1be Education of the Girl Child,~ from 1973.} On June 3. Monk will perform at the Bang on a Can benefit, at (Le) Poisson Rouge; she'll also be in concert in Milan. But, if you can't make citherof those shows, have a look at Baberh M. Vanloo's recent documentary, ~Meredith Monk: Inner Voice." In it, Monk gives full rise to her multigenerational ~. <!waY' nuking performance new.

-Hi/lanAis

March 7, 2009Dance Review | Meredith MonkGuggenheim Spirals, in Sound and MotionBy GIA KOURLAS

Forty years after “Juice: A Theater Cantata in 3 Installments” was performed at the Guggenheim Museum, Meredith Monk is back with a new work, or rather a new-old work. In “Ascension Variations,” presented at the museum on Thursday night, Ms. Monk, the heralded composer, director, singer, choreographer and filmmaker, follows the spatial structure of “Juice.” Or, as she explained in a WNYC interview, “Here’s the same bottle, but the liquid’s different.”

This poignant site-specific work for 120 performers blends selections from Ms. Monk’s recent “Songs of Ascension” with elements of the 1969 “Juice.” The audience members begin on the ground floor of the Guggenheim’s majestic rotunda. From the ramps that swirl above their heads, voices waft throughout the space. Four performers, smashed together to resemble a caterpillar and covered in red from head to toe, slowly plod up the ramp.

The crimson organism is a direct echo of “Juice.” (In that production, Ms. Monk was one of the figures in red.) This time Kate Valk, the scintillating Wooster Group member, leads the pack, her eyes half-shielded by a wide-brimmed hat, as Gideon Crevoshay, Clarinda MacLow and Lawrence Goldhuber waddle behind her, travelers who have lost their way. Ascending the ramp from bottom to top, they slip in and out of view like a mirage.

Singers, in white, congregate in packs along the ramps, breezing along like celestial creatures, raising an arm overhead and jutting it out with an angelic defiance. Musicians hold their instruments over the edge, and more singers, including Ms. Monk, yelp and coo from various points in the space, creating a sound to mirror the way bodies materialize and vanish.

In the second section, the music, “Mieke’s melody #6,” a piece by Ms. Monk and Mieke van Hoek, is abstracted for 35 minutes, as the audience strolls up the ramp’s six levels, where 22 simultaneous events are performed along the edges, in alcoves and stairwells.

Dancers, wearing white, engage in short, ritualistic movement phrases. In one nook two girls scribble in the air as if they were writing on a chalkboard; another group rolls and rears, its bodies consumed by a nervous tic. A crowd congregates around Ms. Monk, who steps from side to side as her arms sway softly. Nothing is forced; each scene builds on the next like a chain of whispers.

Ms. Monk reappears on the ground floor, a lone, graceful speck, cupping her hands around her mouth and calling to the others through song. She’s reversed everything; now the audience, lining the sides of the ramps, peers down as the music ascends. The chorus in white remains scattered throughout the audience, but the rest of the cast members, in procession, make their way down the ramp to join her. Eventually, they lie flat on their backs, skewing gravity with a simple stroke.

“Ascension Variations” is a magical adventure woven from grand and pedestrian touches, and in the end the space itself is the star — or Ms. Monk’s transformation of it. For an hour, we’ve lived in a spiral, where up is down, and down is up. It’s a sacred place.

Photos: Stephanie Berger for The New York Times

Meredith Monk Makes the Guggenheim Dance and SingBy Deborah Jowittpublished: March 04, 2009

Why would I, a dance critic, keep reviewing Meredith Monk, now most famous as a vanguard composer and theater artist? Is it because, to paraphrase a statement of hers, her body sings and her voice dances? Is it because she trained early on as a dancer, and her process is still akin to that of a choreographer? (She doesn’t present musicians with completed scores, but develops them in rehearsals.) Also, traveling is integral to her work. Those attending the stunning four-hour retrospective of her music and film work at the Whitney on February 1 found that they had to keep moving to new places and changing their focus, while

museum visitors came and went and performers appeared in various areas of the huge gallery.

The real answer to my initial question, though, is this: I write about Monk to prolong and share an experience that has set my soul and senses tingling.

On November 7, 1969, Monk presented the first part of Juice: A Theatre Cantata in Three Installments at the Guggenheim Museum (the remaining two installments appeared later in different venues). The event and the concept were amazing. Just two weeks shy of her 26th birthday, she had turned the entire landmark museum—its lobby, upward-spiraling ramp, galleries, stairwells, nooks, crannies, and, briefly, the street outside—into a stage.

Almost 40 years later, she returned to the Guggenheim (again for one performance only) to present Ascension Variations. For this, she has braided strands of Juice into

her most recent musical composition, Songs of Ascension, and the ground plan of the new work is almost identical to that of Juice. For Section 1, we spectators cluster in the lobby and watch performers appear and disappear at various point on the tiers. Next, we stroll up the ramps, along the way viewing performers engaged in various acts among the visual art on exhibit. For the final moments, we come to the railing, wherever we are, and watch what happens down in the lobby where we began.

Some of the images will be familiar to anyone who saw Juice in 1969. Four people wearing red clothes and boots, their hands and faces painted red, trek up the ramp pressed tightly together—a big red caterpillar, a mega-hiker. Kate Valk leads, scrutiniz-ing the landscape; Gideon Crevoshay and Clarinda MacLow’s faces are usually buried in the back of the person ahead; Lawrence Goldhuber brings up the rear, a basket on his back. From time to time, they disappear, only to reappear at a higher level, sometimes encased in a red glow by lighting designer Tony Giovanetti. Three costumed women, one directly above the other, revolve slowly in place throughout the first part; one represents Marie Antoinette, one may be Cleopatra, and the one with the corset and the towering feather headdress suggests La Goulue. There’s also, as in Juice, a singing chorus of people in white clothes.

But during the years since 1969, Monk has developed into a notable composer. The music is much more complex than that for Juice. Monk and her vocal ensemble (Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Ching Gonzalez, Bruce Rameker, Allison Sniffin, and Monk) are joined by the Todd Reynolds Quartet, Bohdan Hilash (winds), and David Cossin (percussion). The chorus—members of the Montclair State University Chorale and the Stonewall Chorale, plus 24 dancers—makes its own melodic assertions.

The theme of ascension is, of course, perfectly in keeping with the Guggenheim. Look way up past the topmost tier to the interior of the blue-lit dome, and you could be peering into the heavenly vault of a Tiepolo ceiling painting. On the other hand, Monk’s viewpoint isn’t Judeo-Christian; she’s been a practicing Buddhist for the last 20 or so years. And, although Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for the Guggenheim emphasizes verticality, it encompasses ascension through the circularity of that upward spi-ral. In Section 1, as singers and musicians appear at various points on the ramps, disappear, and reappear in different places, you sense the space as layered, with no level more desirable than any other.

The acoustics promote the spirituality inherent in much of Monk’s recent music. Her wordless vocalizations loop and swing out over the ledges and hang in the air. A repeated, melodic “Ah lu” can sound like a non-sectarian hymn or a private meditation. When Monk and Geissinger (or any combination of singers) stand on opposite ramps and call out in what I think of as Monk’s mountain voice, they seem to be holding a conversation, exchanging notes—finishing one another’s sentence, if you like—across a chasm of pure, cold air.

Monk and her singers are capable of vocal sounds outside the Western tradition: nasal intonations, growls, yelps, creakings. As-cension Variations employs fewer of these than usual, although at the end of the first part, MacLow, in Monk’s original red-trek-ker role, sings a cranky little song among her resting comrades. Very occasionally, too, the chorus’s harmonic chants snarl into dissonance, and, at one point only, the stringed instruments wrangle. Otherwise, the music is melodious, tender. A man calling out could almost be a priest, and when Hilash exchanges his bass clarinet for a Japanese sho, he makes the chambered wooden wind instrument resonate like a little organ.

The singers—and that includes the ranks of the chorus—don’t just plant themselves, they reach out from the balustrades, lean over them, gesture to the air. Fisher begins the piece by ad-vancing up the ramp; as she goes, she turns this way and that, swirling her arms as if summoning or beckoning. At this moment, she’s some sort of mage, and the only one of the principal sing-ers to wear gray (like the instrumentalists), while the clothes for the others (by Yoshio Yabara) are red or reddish.

An aura of mystery surrounds all this. There are sounds you can hear but not see, like a distant clanking of metal pieces or wooden slats. People disappear and reappear unpredictably in new spots. Spectators crane to see what may becoming from where. Only the three turning women in period costumes remain fixed points.

In 1969, the Guggenheim happened to be showing Ray Lich-tenstein’s paintings. The current exhibition, The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989, of which As-cension Variations is considered a part, is more in tune with Monk’s spare, incandescent aesthetic. During Section 2, when we become strolling museum-goers—looking at art, stopping to greet friends—it becomes apparent that Monk has mated events with artworks and architecture in subtly bewitching ways. Two little girls chase each other and read books within a key-shaped niche. Women thump to the floor, sit spraddle-legged like dolls, upend themselves on the outskirts of James Lee Byar’s astonish-ing three-sided room papered in gold leaf. A countertenor aims his high voice at a rugged construction of what could be railroad ties. MacLow does a reclining dance in front of three chaste, calligraphic watercolors by Jackson Pollock that match her red-ness. Ha-Yang Kim plays her cello before Sam Francis’s muscular painting, Red and Black, as if expecting to take it on in a mar-tial-arts bout. A few steps past where Valk lies motionless, eyes open, beneath the pale rain of Natvar Bhavsar’s Delaware, you come upon three of the white-clad people in a pile, eyes shut, with Andy Warhol’s Sleep looking down on them.

If you see a particularly large clump of spectators, they’ve probably paused to watch Monk and Gonzalez do an awkward little dance of raising their palms to each other and advancing together without ever touching, intermittently murmuring fragments of song. Echoing their gestures is Bruce Conner’s image of white hands on a blue ground.

When we’re summoned to the railing, we see that the rotunda has been cleared of stools, and in the center, in a pool of light, is the woman responsible for all this magic. She’s sitting on the floor, stiff legs spread a little apart, like the dancers we’ve glimpsed in several locations. She’s singing and squeezing a harmonium. Seen from above (high above in my case), this master-ful 65-year-old artist, with her long pigtails and pure voice, seems as small as a child alone in a room. But her voice is rich in experience. She starts in a soft, deep register and works her way up to high melodious, insistent calls. If someone opened the door to the outside right now, dark as it is, birds would flock in.

Eventually most of the others join her, strolling around, singing. But some chorus members remain on the higher levels, at-tentive to conductor Heather J. Buchanan. On either side of me, a man raises his voice. Wonderful! The counterpoint must be floating down to meet the voices that rise. In the end, all the people below lie quietly down, one violinist playing almost until the lights go out. In our grounding is our ascension.

Photos by David Heald

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICAL

LEAH GARCHIK

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Before, there was a long bus ride from San Francisco, a single file walk on a wooded path through rolling

green hillsides dotted with gnarled oaks. And after, there was a string quartet playing during a formal dinner

in Walden Project's sleek new steel-floored building, one glass wall open to the sky and the vineyards. But all

that was peripheral.

The heart of Friday night's excursion to Geyserville was the first public performance -- by Meredith Monk's

troupe -- in artist Ann Hamilton's new eight-story concrete sound tower at Steve and Nancy Oliver's art

ranch.

A hundred twenty or so UC Berkeley Art Museum supporters trekked to the tower through the countryside,

hardly anything man-made visible but the pebbled path on which they trod. And then they crossed a small

wooden bridge leading to a glen, and suddenly loomed Hamilton's tower: gray and wide, a concrete silo. To

enter, they sat and swiveled, scooting through an opening that wasn't quite a door. Inside were two winding

staircases, parallel spirals from a pool of water on the bottom to the sky on top.

Climbing one set of stairs, they arrayed themselves wherever they liked, in coiled formation along the inside

wall of the structure. Looking down at the water's reflection of the staircase and the sky was like being inside

a spyglass, open at both ends.

Monk and four troupe members were on the second staircase, their movements thus unimpeded by the

spectators. The performance was already under way as the audience arrived, and it was as though guests

placing themselves around the structure were part of the choreography.

The performers' clothing, intensely blue, made vivid daubs of color against the gray of the concrete. Their

voices -- augmented by harmoniums, Jew's harps, megaphones and metal sticks played against the support

bars of the metal railing -- soared and swelled in organ-like harmonies, ponged like staccato raindrops,

yodeled from spiral to spiral as though from mountain to mountain.

Oliver mentioned afterward that an acoustic engineer who had been called in to consult on the project had

given up, saying he'd had no experience that would enable him to know whether sound inside would be

audible. But from wherever you were, you heard it all, even the merest exhalation, floating on molecules of

air that seemed heavy enough to grab. The sounds evoked Gregorian prayers, sacred Hebrew melodies,

Buddhist chants, and many listeners closed their eyes and became a congregation.

The day before, said Oliver, every worker had been invited to a party on the site; on Saturday, Bay Area

artists were asked to a performance; and on Sunday, there was a benefit for the Edible Schoolyard.

In the spring and fall of each year, the almost 20 commissioned pieces on the ranch -- including work by

Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman and Andy Goldsworthy -- may be seen by groups of visitors, by prior

arrangement. Oliver asks only that each group donate a minimum of $2,500 to an arts organization. He will

commission a piece of music for the tower every spring, and a poem every fall. Monk is preparing "Voices of

Ascension'' specifically for the tower. "As long as I can walk up those tower steps with Steve,'' said Hamilton,

"we will be working together.''

At the podium, the Ohio artist and New York composer/choreographer -- each a MacArthur award winner --

slung their arms around each other's shoulders. "The first time we got together,'' said Monk, "I went to

Columbus, and we cooked for a day or two. And I realized we could get along.''

At a Berkeley museum dinner a few months ago, when Oliver spoke of this project to me, he began his

description by mentioning the number of tons of concrete that had been used. He's in the construction

business; his own work is tangible. His pleasure – as Hamilton put it, encouraging an artist "to do something

that you cannot do anywhere else'' -- is in supporting the sublime.

http://www.sfgate.com

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Avant-garde musician and performance artist Meredith Monk enthralled Syrian students on Monday with a lesson on vocal and choreographic techniques in a rare cul-tural exchange between the two countries.

Monk, an innovative singer, composer, filmmaker and choreog-rapher, gave a workshop at the national conservatoire before a concert in Damascus on Monday with vocalists Theo Blackman and Katie Geissinger.

Washington has imposed sanctions on Syria over its support for anti-U.S. groups in the Middle East.

Politics featured little as Monk and Geissinger gave Syrian singers, dancers and actors lessons in choreogra-phy, vocal techniques and how to construct complex singing forms.

“Everybody was nervous and little by little we spoke the same language. I shared some of the discoveries I have made in very direct way. It will help people experience the concert with more knowledge,” Monk told Reuters.

“If we come and just perform we will never find out where Syrian artists are coming from and what they know.”

Monk was invited by the Syrian government as part of performances to celebrate Damascus as the 2008 capi-tal of Arab culture.

The last U.S. group to perform in Syria was the jazzy Freddie Bryant and Kaleidoscope in 2004.

“Music is fundamental as breathing. It speaks to any body. This is why I am here. The politics does not mat-ter,” Monk said.

One of Monk’s favorite singers is the Arab diva Umm Kalthoum, who died in 1975. Like Monk, Umm Kalthoum stuck rigorously to traditional forms of music and singing.

Monk said strict practice and adherence to musical forms did not prevent improvisation even if the text, scale and melody hardly changed.

“A piece I sang in 1978 and I sing now is the same, but you will also hear that I have room to play. It is not that different from Arabic music. Umm Kalthoum took one text and did it different ways,” she said.

Monk’s performance on Monday at the Opera House will span work from her 43-year career, including unac-companied solo pieces and others with piano and violin.

“I always want to be risky, working on something that I don’t know rather than something I do now,” she said.

Syrian students gave Monk an enthusiastic reception, although her techniques differed from traditional methods taught at the conservatoire, where classes are influenced by Communist era curricula from Eastern Europe.

“Her whole art is different. The exercises she gave we would not have learned in a year,” actress Fatina Laila said.

(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

Pioneering U.S. singer enthralls Syrian studentsSun Apr 20, 2008 6:04pm EDT

FANFARE I USA July I August 2008

M. MONll /mperm,ner". ' Meredith Monk (voc, pn); TI>&o Bleckm,,,,,, (voc): E~en Fisher (voc): Katie Geissinger (voc); Ching Gonzale~ (voc): $ash .. Boganowitsch (voc): Silvie Jensen (voc); AU;soo Snilfi" (pn, vn, voc): John Hollenbeck (perc): Bohdan H'ash (woodwinds) ' ECM 10815 (65:1 ' )

I Ihink Ihe easiesl lOUie would be 10 ded"", Mcredith Monk (b, (942) a Nalional Li,-ing Treasure, and be done w;lh the likes (>f me passing any judgmen1. I know il s.ouoos flippanl, bUl il' S nol so in1eOO' cd, Monk is by noW beyond being c,'alualed. Her an is completely formed, o~ of111e masl sut>st.an· Ilal, qUCSIing bodies of work around. no mancr wblll1e diSl.:iplioe. Trained as a dancer, she has become a musician and performer of Ihe lirsl rank. and de'-elopcd a composer's ",>icc Ihar's uncrly her own.

Every few years Mon~ produce. a neW large'&eaJe multimedia ""ork using her company, exploring a given Iheme in a &erics of poelic and myslerious images and sketches. 'mpernta"c,,<'c (2006) deal~ " 'ilh Ihe passing of 1hings, and in panicular wilh Ihe dealh of m,r longtime panncr, Micke van Hoek. from Ihe lirst notes of tbe opening track, the d«cp(i\'cly simple "'Iasl song," (sung by a still.young·sounding Monk), We are in territory familiar 10 lhose already acquainted with her work, Simpk chords. unique vocal lechnique, an obsessive paring down of text-Monk wrilcs music Ibal sounds like a special folk music We 3itould know but can't quite place. Monk wrilCS Ihal this music has more chromalic;sm than in her previous works, and tbt 's true_ TIle harmonies are ITIOI"<:

shifting, and Ihere are ,"ocal and ins1rumenlallines thaI moVe inlo different realms from the rCSt of Ihe gro-up. Al the same lime, the music sounds neilher w'ildly experimental nOr overly dissonant. Rather, i1's consiSTently, quietly imenst.

The longer piece, "liminal," e xplores tncse fanher reaches most fully: "s low dissolve" is par· 1icularly poignant in il5 orchestration ofvoiccs, violin, bass clarinet and gloxkenspiel: "'disequilibrium" accompanie. a glissandoing "ocal stxtct with a bicycle wheel'. cycles of percussive Ihwaps. It's ;"\"enti\'e, imaginali"e, and hauming.

Monk has rearranged the original sequence of music to make the album more satisfying as a I'I'rely a~ral c~perience. I 1hink that succeeds. but J do wish that ECM would get inlO Ihe DVD busi · ness. as 1his is precisely Ihe $On of work that boenelilS from 1he visual/theatrical aspect. which is always pan of Monk' s vision from lhc outset. (I can teS1ify from experience Ihat seeing the mo,·e· mcnlS o{lhe performers brings a completely new level of meaning- and humor! - IO her pieces.)

Pcrfonnanccs are delinili,· •. Thcre arc no te~ts provided, but the enuncia tion is exact. and besides much of Ihc 1ext is either ··non·linear" or uscs Monk's idiosyncratic vocali&e. As another building block in Ibe gr.rnd edifice o f a life's won.:, Ihis is In cS5efltial releast. Rolwn Carl

CD/LP Review | Published: March 15, 2008

impermanenceMeredith Monk | ECM Records (2008)

By John Kelman Discuss

The human voice may well be themost expressive instrument of all,capable of the subtlest of nuanceand the most dramatic exclamation,but few have explored its full rangeas thoroughly as Meredith Monk .Over the course of eight ECMalbums beginning with Dolmen Music (ECM, 1981)Monk—a composer, filmmaker, vocalist and pianist—hasbuilt a body of work that's been a significant referencepoint for multidisciplinary singers including America'sTheo Bleckmann and Norway's Sidsel Endresen ,whose One (Sofa, 2007) consolidated her ownexperiments with the vast potential of the human voice.It's been six years since Monk's last release, mercy(ECM, 2002), and impermanence represents her largestensemble work since Atlas: An Opera in Three Parts(ECM, 1993).

Despite the participation of up to eight voices and threeinstrumentalists, impermanence's subtext on thefleeting nature of life itself is delivered with an etherealelegance. Originally presented as an interdisciplinarywork involving movement and video in addition to vocalsand instruments, the suite has been completely revisedfor its audio release, making it stand alone as an entityseparate from its theatrical origins.

Monk continues to evolve a musical approach that bringsinstruments and voices together to such a degree thatdelineation dissolves. There's no shortage of melodiccontent in her vocal arrangements, with the brief,angelic "passage" a minimalist confluence of sevendistinct and lyrical lines. Still, phonetics play an equalpart as, on the similarly layered "maybe 2," what appearto be random sounds ultimately converge into a series ofrepeated words, supported by percussionist JohnHollenbeck 's bass drum and Bohdan Hilash's clarinets

Meredith Monk | impermanence http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=28695

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—which mesh seamlessly and nearly indistinguishablyfrom the six voices.

But it's on "skeleton lines," with Monk's the only voiceheard amidst pianos, vibraphone, marimba, woodenclackers and clarinet, where her vocal innovation is at itsclearest. Over a rhythmically propulsive backdrop,Monk's voice assumes word-like but nonsensicalarticulations. Instead, via her recondite melody, theybecome as important as the notes she sings, ultimatelyleaving conventional form behind to evoke a series ofsonant phrases that, while unusual, don't detract fromthe piece's undeniable melodism.

While voice dominates impermanence, tracks like"totentanz," with only Monk and Theo Bleckmannparticipating, speak to Monk's increased interest inwriting for instruments alone. A more abstract andabstruse work than the atmospheric "liminal," thevarious instruments are ultimately left behind, ultimatelyending with the two voices a capella, where rapidlyarticulating independently but periodically comingtogether for long downward swoops.

Like most of Monk's work, impermanence requiresdeserting any preconception that the voice should besolely a medium for lyrics and clear melody, despiteboth characteristics being a part of what she does. Still,despite her expansion of the voice into unexpected andconventionally non-musical territory, impermanenceremains a compellingly beautiful and deeply resonantwork that approaches the ephemerality of life in themost personal of terms.

Track listing: last song; maybe 1; little breath; liminal;disequilibrium; particular dance; between song;passage; maybe 2; skeleton lines; slow dissolve;totentanz; sweep 1; rocking; sweep 2; Meike's melody#5.

Personnel: Meredith Monk: voice (1, 3-12, 14, 16),piano (1, 2, 10); Allison Sniffin: voice (3-5, 7-9, 11,14-16), piano (2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 16), violin (3, 11, 12);Katie Geissinger: voice (3-9, 11, 12, 14, 16), piano (2);Ellen Fisher: voice (5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 16), piano (2);Theo Bleckmann: voice (3-6, 8. 9, 11, 12, 14, 16),piano (2, 10); Ching Gonzalez: voice (6, 8, 9, 11, 14,16), piano (2); Bohdan Hilash: piano (2), bass clarinet(3, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14), Bb clarinet (4, 7, 10, 12), Aclarinet (4), soprano saxophone (4, 12), aulos (4),double ocarina (6), Balinese flute (6), zaphoon (6), pung(6), ocean drum (15); John Hollenbeck: piano (2),elephant bells (3), marimba (4, 10, 12, 14), vibraphone(4, 7, 10, 12, 14, 16), percussion (4), bass drum (4, 6,9, 12), bicycle wheel (5), metal and wood percussion(6), cymbal (6), anklung (6), Chinese temple bells (7,15), wooden clackers (10), glockenspiel (11), paddledrums (12, 13), percussion (15), magnets (15), SilvieJensen: voice (5, 6, 8, 11, 14, 16); SashaBogdanowitsch: voice (6, 8, 11, 14, 16).

Meredith Monk | impermanence http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=28695

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