ECM Releases New Meredith Monk Album

Some readers may recall that I have been following performances by Meredith Monk since the late Sixties, when I attended her solo keyboard performance (with voice) when the American Dance Festival was still based in New London, Connecticut, on the campus of the Connecticut College for Women (which is now co-educational and called simply Connecticut College). Much of that nostalgia was recalled about three years ago when ECM New Series released the thirteen-CD box set Meredith Monk: The Recordings. This coming Friday will be the first new ECM album of her music since the appearance of that box set. For those seeking completeness as soon as possible, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

Meredith Monk on the cover of her latest album (photograph by Julieta Cervantes, courtesy of Jensen Artists)

The title of the new album is Cellular Songs. This may be the first album in which Monk does not sing on all tracks. Her Vocal Ensemble includes four other vocalists, each with their own characteristic sonorities: Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Joanna Lynn-Jacobs, and Allison Sniffin. Sniffin also plays both violin and piano, and John Hollenbeck plays vibraphone and percussion. “Click Song #3,” which has two tracks, the first of which is a “Prologue,” also includes “body percussion.” Background information can be found in an essay by Bonnie Marranca entitled “Performance as a Life Science,” which occupies two pages in the accompanying booklet.

I have listened to enough of Monk by now to acknowledge that the experience is an acquired taste. Every encounter has me reflecting on the phrase “first a little patience.” However, it was only this morning that I discovered that the phrase originated in John Keats’ epic poem Endymion! This is not necessarily to associate a full-length Monk album with epic poetry. Nevertheless, she is not afraid to undertake creations on a large scale, attending to the necessary details as progress unfolds. One can appreciate a sense of that unfolding when listening to all fifteen of the tracks on Cellular Songs one after another!