Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble
Meredith Monk, composer, singer, director, choreographer, and visual artist, has been bringing her unique and prolific work to audiences for nearly five decades. In January the 71-year-old force of nature debuted her newest evening-length work at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA.
Monk’s powerful work echoes 1960s and ‘70s performance art—no surprise, since it’s where she first made her mark—but although recent pieces have been comprised of as many as 82 performers, the current work is considerably more intimate. While she knows how to use a sea of people to create a wave of sound and movement, here Monk works with just eight voices to produce that same audio and energetic in-and-out of the tide. Singing, or rather toning over and through each other, they fold and fold again in a lush and enveloping wave. There are no words, but the sounds manage to convey an urgency, likely Monk’s own feelings “on behalf of nature.”
Monk describes the work as “a poetic meditation on the environment, inspired in part by the Buddhist notion of conjoining heaven and earth through human beings… illuminating the interconnection and interdependency of us all.” Indeed, so interconnected is the company that the orchestra sometimes function as singers and the singers use their voices like orchestra instruments. Mallets are used to particularly resonant effect, artfully balanced with violin, keyboards and a bevy of woodwinds.
The audience won’t be distracted by the costumes in this work. For most of the performance the women are garbed in what appear to be thrift shop finds that, other than involving skirts, are virtually genderless. The men’s attire is slightly more appealing.
But the audience isn’t there for the costumes, and the sound is moving, inspiring and deeply satisfying. It’s easy to see why Monk was named Musical America’s 2012 Composer of the Year.
—Abigail Lewis
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