An extraordinary event awaits the Lithuanian audience - the legendary creator and performer Meredith Monk will hold her performance in Vilnius. October 27 The concert organized by Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble will take place at the Lithuanian National Drama Theater. In her performance program, the famous artist included her most famous works, such as "Gotham Lullaby", "Hips Dance", "Scared Song", "Panda Chant I", "Memory Song" and many other albums from different periods: "Volcano Songs (1993), the three-part opera Atlas (1991), Cellular Songs (2018), The Games (1984), Songs from the Hill (1975-1976), Impermanence (2004- 2006), "mercy" (2001), "The Politics of Quiet" (1996), etc. Meredith Monk (vocals, keyboards) will be joined by two longtime members of her vocal ensemble, Katie Geissinger (vocals) and Allison Sniffin (vocals, violin, keyboards).
Composer, singer, choreographer, creator of new opera and musical theater, installations and film, Meredith Monk is one of the pivotal figures in American music. She is considered one of the most unique and influential artists of our time: according to Michael Quinn of The Classical Review, Meredith Monk is "one of the great innovators of modern music". She is a pioneer of the so-called extended vocal technique and interdisciplinary performance, crossing the boundaries of different genres, long before the concept of "crossover", according to The Washington Post columnist Anne Midgette. According to The New Yorker critic Alex Ross: “Monk created a world that had never existed before in the history of art. At the same time corporeal and ephemeral, raw and cultivated at the same time, her works refute the false complexity of city life and reveal its "underground" civilizations that sing, dance and meditate on the eternal."
Monk's internationally acclaimed works have been touring the world for nearly six decades. She has been called a "voice mage" and "one of America's greatest composers." She won even three of the most prestigious ratings in the USA: in 2019 became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017. won the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, 2015 - National Medal of Arts awarded to her by President Barack Obama.
Meredith Monk began her creative career in 1964. after moving to New York. She presented her compositions in galleries, churches and other non-concert spaces. in 1968 she founded The House dance troupe, with which she organized interdisciplinary performances. in 1965 started innovative studies of the voice as a versatile instrument, and in 1978 for that purpose, he founded "Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble", which until now consists of some of the best and bravest performers of new music - singers and instrumentalists. With this ensemble, Monk won various awards, including the 2008 Grammy nomination for the album "impermanence". Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble's recordings are mainly released in ECM's new music series, and they are spread all over the world. The ensemble's live performances have been taking place at various festivals, theater stages and concert halls for more than four decades. Meredith Monk's music is also heard in the cinema: in the films of such directors as Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard, David Byrne or the Coen brothers. She also makes films herself: the most famous are Ellis Island (1981) and Book of Days (1988), which were screened at many film festivals.
In addition to the vocal, music theater works and operas that make up the majority of Monk's work, the artist composes for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, receiving commissions from Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet and other artists. in 2019 a new production of her opera Atlas (1991) was performed with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yuval Sharon.
She was the first to create a special composition in the rotunda of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1969). Other notable site-specific works include American Archeology #1: Roosevelt Island (1994) and Songs of Ascension (2008) at the Ann Hamilton Tower. Meredith Monk's films, installations and other works are exhibited in various museums and galleries - Exit Art, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and elsewhere.
