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MEREDITH MONK
it m m pii BJORK
and two multi-instrumentalists.
"We're doing all the crucial parts.
" eredith Monk speaks soft- The program starts out with three a
ly from her New York cappella pieces, and ends with Turhome to avoid straining tle Dreams, which I wrote in the ear.her swollen vocal cords. ly eighties for voice, keyboards and
It's the morning after a four-hour movement. It's a very challenging
marathon concert at Carnegie Hall piece to do."
to mark her 40th anniversary as a
While her work is always daring,
professional artist — an event that Monk dislikes the tag "avantfeatured a string of special guests, garde": "It's meaningless to me.
including a certain Icelandic icon.
There's nothing new under the sun,
"Bjork did one of my songs, Goth- things cycle back around
Noam Lullaby. I'd heard her sing that body's ahead of anybody else."
in a performance with the Brodsky
Monk considers herself lucky to
String Quartet on an MP3fileone of have found a strong and loyal audimy [voice] students gave me, and I ence early in her career, and she is
found it really interesting. Then we excited that in recent years her permet six months ago, and liked each formances have drawn a growing
other very much. She's a lovely spir- number of young listeners.
it."
The friendship between Monk
It's easy to understand the mu- and Bjork will doubtless inspire a
tual attraction. Both women are further wave of fans and interdiscimusical adventurers who use the plinary artists, especially since the
voice as their primary instrument two have started working on a coland refuse to follow convention or laborative piece, and will perform
to repeat themselves. In Monk's together in a year's time.
case, that's meant inventing a new
"Our respective creations sound,
wordless language for each of her look and manifest themselves difsongs — usually by adding choreo- ferently, but there's something in
graphy of movement and gesture, their inquisitive spirit that we have
and often video images.
in common," says Monk. "We'll see
Monk began experimenting at an where that goes."
early age. "I realized there was a
very physical and kinetic relation- Meredith Monk discusses her work
ship between the body and the at 7 p. m. tonight at The Ironworks,
voice, that the voice could have a 235 Alexander St., 604-662-4717,
kind of articulation, flexibility and and performs tomorrow at 8 p. m. at
fluidity like the body, and that with- The Chan Centre, 6562 Crescent
in it you could have limitless Rd., 604-280-3311.
colours, worlds, textures, timbres,
landscapes, characters," she says.
Special to The Globe and Mail
"By thinking of the voice more as
an abstract instrument, there was
much to discover, because it delineates energies for which we don't
have words. It goes between the
emotions. I'm always trying to work
with a sense of direct experience
I'm working with the nameless."
Monk's creations are curiously
free of temporal and cultural markers. On Mercy, her latest recording,
the songs suggest by turns Gregorian chant, Inuit throat-singing, Erik
Satie's piano compositions, flocks
of seagull and geese, Balinese
gamelan, Scandinavian cattleherding calls and the scat vocalizations of jazz. What emerges is music
that's fresh, accessible and essential. "My sensibility has always been
to try for a kind of transparency. I
tend not to like things too thick, and
I never work for effect," she says.
SCOTT SCHAFER
When Monk performs at the
Chan tomorrow, she'll present most Musical adventurer Meredith
of the songs on Mercy with three Monk has struck up a friendship
singers from her vocal ensemble with Icelandic icon Bjork.
BY TONY MONTAGUE

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