INFLUENTIAL COMPOSER, SINGER, AND INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST MEREDITH MONK CELEBRATES 80TH BIRTHDAY YEAR

PERFORMANCES AND NEW WORKS TO DEBUT THROUGHOUT 2023

Internationally acclaimed composer, director and interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk confirms a series of performances and new works this year in celebration of her 80th birthday.

Indra’s Net, Monk’s newest interdisciplinary evening-length music theater piece, will premiere June 23 & 24 at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. The piece, which affirms the interconnectedness of life, completes Monk’s trilogy of works dedicated to our relationship with the natural world, following On Behalf of Nature (2013), a plea for ecological awareness, and Cellular Songs (2018), which turned attention to the fabric of life itself.

“In a world that is so fragmented and full of sorrow, I want to create work that affirms life and our sense of connection to each other and all living beings,” says Monk.

In celebration of Monk’s 80th birthday and ever-growing body of work, ECM New Series released Meredith Monk: The Recordings last fall, a 13-CD box set compiling all of Monk’s ECM New Series discs to date, along with a 300-page book containing all original liner notes plus new texts, interviews, photographs, archival documents, and more.

On May 5, The Town Hall and Pioneer Works will present a performance of Monk’s MEMORY GAME in tandem with the opening day of the Bang on a Can Long Play Festival at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY. Monk, her Vocal Ensemble (including Theo Bleckmann, Katie Gessinger, and Allison Sniffin) and the Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform MEMORY GAME, expanded and reimagined arrangements of nine pieces from the course of Monk’s career.

On July 22, Monk will team up with percussionist and long-time friend John Hollenbeck for Duet Behavior 2023. In an intimate evening at the West Kortright Centre in upstate New York, the duo will expand and improvise upon pieces from Monk’s 50+ year catalogue, creating new arrangements of her iconic compositions via her pioneering vocal magic and his masterful percussion.

From October 21-March 17, the Oude Kerk Amsterdam and the Hartwig Art Foundation will jointly present the first extensive European exhibition about Meredith Monk. The exhibition will showcase her music, notations, scores and drawings, sound recordings and films, and a set of immersive installations which will translate themes and objects from her stage productions.

And from November 10-March 3, Munich’s Haus der Kunst will next host Meredith Monk: Calling, the other act of this first survey on the oeuvre of Meredith Monk, in collaboration with Oude Kerk, Amsterdam and the Hartwig Art Foundation. The exhibition is developed in close collaboration with Meredith Monk and The House Foundation for the Arts.

ABOUT MEREDITH MONK

Meredith Monk is a composer, singer and creator of new opera and music-theater works. Recognized as one of the most unique and influential artists of our time, she is a pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique.” Her groundbreaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies and memories for which there are no words. Celebrated internationally, her work has been presented at major venues around the world.

In 1965, Monk began her innovative exploration of the voice as a multifaceted instrument, composing solo pieces for unaccompanied voice and voice and keyboard. In 1978, she formed Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble to further expand her musical textures and forms. Most of her music can be heard on the ECM label, including the Grammy-nominated impermanence and highly acclaimed On Behalf of Nature. Her compositions have also been featured in films by Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard, David Byrne and the Coen Brothers.

Since the early 2000s, Monk has been creating vital new repertoire for orchestra, chamber ensembles and solo instruments, with recent commissions from the San Francisco Symphony and Carnegie Hall where she held the 2014–15 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair in conjunction with her 50th Season of creating and performing.

Over the last six decades, Monk has been hailed as one of National Public Radio’s 50 Great Voices and garnered a host of awards and honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship and Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Republic of France. Recently Monk received three of the highest honors bestowed on a living artist in the United States: induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2017 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and a 2015 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.

For more information, please contact Carla Sacks at Sacks & Co., 212.741.1000.