November 20: Meredith Monk

Composer, choreographer, theater artist and singer Meredith Monk was born in Lima, Peru on this date in 1942. In 1968 she founded The House, a company dedicated to interdisciplinary performance, and in 1978 she formed Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble. Monk is perhaps most widely known for her uncanny, highly emotional vocalizations, which seem to embody the evolution of human utterance; Lincoln Center presented a three-concert retrospective of these and other musical works in 2000. She is also a pioneer of avant-garde theater, site-specific performance, contemporary opera, and experimental film, with many awards that include the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award in 1995, two Guggenheim Fellowships, three “Obies,” two “Bessie” awards, and the ASCAP Concert Music Award. Two of her films, Ellis Island (1981), and Book of Days (1988), are based on a single vision: “One day during summer of 1984, as I was sweeping the floor of my house in the country, the image of a young girl (in black and white) and a medieval street in the Jewish community (also in black and white) came to me.” Films for which she has composed music include the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski. For an excerpt of a documentary about her by Peter Greenaway, click here. To see her singing, look below.

“I work in between the cracks, where the voice starts dancing, where the body starts singing, where theater becomes cinema.” —Meredith Monk