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DANCE NEWS: Influential Composer, Singer, and Interdisciplinary Artist Meredith Monk Celebrates 80th Birthday
Performances and New Works to Debut Throughout 2023
Internationally acclaimed composer, director and interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk has confirmed 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 and 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.
