Meredith Monk

"It’s hard to find your own voice because anything and everything is available. I think the idea of originality is very important even if it might be an old concept, but finding your own voice, in the largest sense of the word, is how we get to something new."

―Meredith Monk

With her latest, multivalent ECM New Series album, Meredith aimed to address ecology and climate change, she says: "Believing that music speaks more directly than words, I worked to make a piece with a fluid, perceptual field that could expand awareness of what we are in danger of losing. On Behalf of Nature is a meditation on our intimate connection to nature, its inner structures, the fragility of its ecology and our interdependence." Voices and instruments have equal weight: sometimes each is heard alone; sometimes they are blended to form a new, mysterious sound; sometimes they are combined to create intricate, layered, yet transparent sonic landscapes.

Meredith Monk's (b. 1942) music has been linked to the sacred vocal works of Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century mystic abbess and composer. It's often been said that Monk's voice can sound simultaneously ancient and new. She certainly belongs to a group of singer/composers who reacted to the vibrato-laden ornate antics of 19th-century opera, and sought to return to the clarity found in medieval ars nova and chant, as well as Eastern European folk traditions. I remember the poet Robert Pinsky once saying that if you want true inspiration, don't look back one generation or even two, but delve way back into the distant past, to the origins of language and art. Monk has created timeless music.

Sean Shibe's second PENTATONE album Lost & Found is an ecstatic journey containing music by outsiders, mystics, visionaries, who often have more than one identity and lay claim to various artistic traditions, genres, or audiences. The repertoire ranges from Hildegard von Bingen to Olivier Messiaen, Moondog, Julius Eastman, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Meredith Monk, Shiva Feshareki, Oliver Leith and Daniel Kidane. Stretching ten centuries, these pieces are bound together by Shibe's unique electric guitar sound and aesthetic. Multi-award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe brings a fresh and innovative approach to the traditional classical guitar, while also exploring contemporary music and repertoire for electric guitar. He continues his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE after his well-received label debut Camino (2021).