Meredith Monk

“Songs of Ascension” is a major new recording from composer Meredith Monk and her vocal ensemble. Written in 2008, it is conceived as a continuous composition, a departure from Monk’s earlier collaged or episodic extended works. In recent years Meredith Monk’s been expanding into the worlds of orchestra and string quartet. On “Songs of Ascension” she teams up with a string quartet of New York players well versed in new music. With winds, percussion and two vocal groups added to her already extraordinary singers, this is one of Monk’s most musically ambitious ventures. Voices and instruments are paired and balanced against each other to an extent rare in her music.

Meredith Monk is generally described as an avant-garde artist of many talents. Of her many talents there is no question, but what exactly makes her “avant-garde”? The Random House Dictionary defines the term as meaning “of or pertaining to the experimental treatment of artistic, musical, or literary material.” This raises another question: What does it mean to be experimental? The same dictionary gives us: “founded on…an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle.”

Mercy is a music theater collaboration between Meredith Monk and visual artist Ann Hamilton, described as "a meditation on the human capacity to both extend and withhold compassion, kindness, empathy, and mercy." It's scored for six dancer/vocalists, two keyboards, percussion, violin, and theremin. Music and choreography are by Monk, with installations by Hamilton. Conception, development, and direction were shared.

One of the first and best "performance artists," Meredith Monk's work is some of the least contrived and most convincing in that amorphously defined genre. Though largely and perhaps primarily a musician, Monk combines sound with choreography, image, and object, creating an art that defies category. Her unconventional treatment of the voice as a musical instrument unto itself is arguably her greatest innovation; no other Western artist has done more to extend the art of the wordless vocal.