composer, singer, director-choreographer, creator of modern opera genre, musical theater, films and installations.

Since 1960 Monk creates interdisciplinary productions that combine music, theater and dance in close collaboration with ECM Records. in 1991 Monk created the opera Atlas for the Houston Opera House, Texas. Her music has been used in films produced by the Coen Brothers (The Big Lebowski, 1998) and Jean-Luc Godard (Nouvelle Vague, 1990 and Notre musique, 2004), and hip-hop artist DJ Shadow used fragments of Monk's Dolmen Music (1979) in a song "Midnight in a Perfect World" (1996).