Impermanence

Meredith Monk has been at it for twenty years now, moving steadily across an artistic landscape that seems to span the world and more. I suppose she should be called a revolutionary, since her work obeys the dictates of no other form or authority; but the events she coordinates on stage never look as though they're rebelling, never look as though they're striving to be new and different. Everything proceeds with calm and certainty, and no matter how weird the accumulated details become, each moment strikes with its own absolute truth. By the end of the evening we see that in fact it isn't weird—it's Meredith Monk. What we picked up at the box office earlier was a ticket to her consciousness.

—Laura Shapiro, Seattle Weekly, May 9, 1984
(found in Meredith Monk, edited by Deborah Jowitt)

Bones and breath, flesh and soul. Meditation and exuberance. Community and solitude. Grieving in death, joy in life.

You missed out if you weren't there this week. BAM in November. Snaps, y'all.

Comments

[Heather]

I cried that I couldn't attend either Tuesday or Wednesday night. Reading Kosman's review today, I couldn't help but STOP for a very long minute to contemplate:

"As she sang, Monk fragmented the phrases and turned them inside out, like a human sampler -- now bending the pitch up and down, now repeating tiny fragments in a rhythmic stutter. The effect was like a Joni Mitchell ballad ("The Last Time I Saw Richard" would be the obvious choice) cut up and reassembled."

We "coo over Matmos" (oh yes, I do too!) and yet Monk does it LIVE. I find this fascinating. I'm unsure if the piano is as capable as the human voice at sounding (acoustically, in live time) as if it's been processed. Or maybe Monk does let technologies help her out; I guess I'd know if I'd been able to go! Next time.