Description
For five decades, vocalist-composer Meredith Monk has explored what she calls “primordial utterance,� or non-verbal vocal sound that lay beneath and beyond language, expressing “that for which we have no words.�
This exploration has led her to create music that The New Yorker describes as simultaneously “visceral and ethereal, raw and rapt,� an art that “sings, dances and meditates on timeless forces.�
With her latest, multivalent ECM New Series album, Monk 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.
Personnel: Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble - Sidney Chen, Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Meredith Monk, Bruce Rameker, Allison Sniffin (voices); Bohdan Hilash (woodwinds); John Hollenbeck (percussion); Allison Sniffin (piano, keyboard, violin, French horn); Laura Sherman (harp)