MARCH 5 7:30 PM THURSDAY

MEMORIAL HALL BEASLEY-CURTIS AUDITORIUM

75 MINUTES, NO INTERMISSION CELLULAR SONGS: CONCERT VERSION MEREDITH MONK Composed by MEREDITH MONK MEREDITH MONK, voice and keyboard & VOCAL ALLISON EASTER, voice ELLEN FISHER, voice KATIE GEISSINGER, voice ENSEMBLE ALLISON SNIFFIN, voice, violin, and keyboard structure, which may look deceptively simple. The 75-minute work is scored for piano, keyboard, violin, and the PERFORMANCE shimmering chorus of women’s voices AS A LIFE SCIENCE that animate the space.

BY BONNIE MARRANCA The work of Monk as composer, performer, director, choreographer, and filmmaker has “AS ARTISTS, WE’RE ALL achieved a singular prominence in the world CONTENDING WITH WHAT TO of performance. Her range extends from DO AT A TIME LIKE THIS. I wanted solo performance to site-specific works, to make a piece that can be seen as an from theater and opera to compositions alternative possibility of human behavior, for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and where the values are cooperation, solo instruments. Monk’s sense of scale interdependence, and kindness, as an antidote is equally versatile in works large and PHOTO BY CHRISTINE ALICINO CHRISTINE BY PHOTO to the values that are being propagated right small, as varied as Quarry, Education of the now.” After a half-century as an influential Girlchild, Facing North, The Games, and the figure in the creation of contemporary more recent mercy, impermanence, and performance culture, Meredith Monk goes Songs of Ascension. Starting with her own right to the heart of the challenge. ecological consciousness and recent readings in medicine, she was drawn naturally to Cellular Songs is conceived for five women the dimensions of the cell. “The cell is the performers—Monk and her vocal ensemble fundamental unit of life, but it can also reflect consisting of Katie Geissinger, Allison the fundamental units of the universe, so that Sniffin, Ellen Fisher, and Allison Easter. it’s got this sense of us as part of a much Dressed in layers of white and beige-toned bigger whole. I’ve become fascinated by their clothes, the women sing, dance, and play wit and their vibrancy. What is going on in the the piano together, all the while modeling cell is so complex and it’s a real prototype of behavior of care, comfort, companionship, the possibility of what a society could be if and collaboration. Glorious colors of sound you take those same principles and expand arise from the intricate musical textures. The them.” Monk has always been interested only words of the piece are in Monk’s song of in the reflective power of microcosm and wisdom, “Happy Woman.” Bodies alone make macrocosm, a theme explored in her the landscape. previous music-theater offering, On Behalf of Nature (2013). Cellular Songs inhabits its own special realm of music-theater in its soulful interweaving of What is distinctive in the experience of music, theater, image, and movement. Monk Cellular Songs is to watch its ethical describes her process in spatial terms: “Some fundamentals unfold over time in the of the pieces have much more dissonance and performance on multiple levels: structurally, chromatic kind of harmonies, and the forms musically, and thematically. A philosophic are almost like three-dimensional sculptures. worldview is viscerally demonstrated in Earlier, my music had much more to do with the way the performers use their bodies to layering. Now you can almost see or hear generate a social world. The women literally the piece rotating as if it were a sculpture breathe into the space, creating the feeling in space, though it’s just a musical form.” of radiance. If, for Monk, the cell is the A visual architecture is built into its rigorous fundamental unit of life, she also affirms her

CAROLINAPERFORMINGARTS.ORG 17 CELLULAR SONGS: CONCERT VERSION MEREDITH MONK & VOCAL ENSEMBLE

belief in the purity of perception: MEREDITH MONK is a composer, ELLEN FISHER is a movement- “Over the last 10 years I’ve had singer, director, choreographer, based performance artist whose the impulse to boil down what I filmmaker, and creator of new work integrates gestural actions am doing to its essence. It is a opera, music-theater works, films, with visual elements such as very worthwhile thing to take on and installations. Considered film and shadow play. Fisher’s a theme that you can spend time one of the most unique and performance work is informed by contemplating, a theme that can influential artists of our time, she her ethnographic research in the never be answered and can only is a pioneer of what is now called rituals and trance dances of South be hinted at and glimpsed. Literally, “extended vocal technique” and Asia, particularly Sri Lanka, for the process of making a piece “interdisciplinary performance.” which she has received ACCNY is the process of contemplating Over the last six decades Monk grants and a Fulbright. She began something. To contemplate the has received numerous awards performing with Meredith Monk/The ineffable is a wonderful way to and honors including a MacArthur House in the 1970s. spend your life.” “Genius” award and Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by KATIE GEISSINGER has performed Art takes many forms to address the Republic of France. Recently, with Meredith Monk worldwide global crises as a way of Monk received three of the highest beginning with ATLAS in 1991, comprehending reality. Monk’s honors bestowed on a living artist and can be heard on the majority work has chosen a path different in the United States: induction of Monk’s recordings with ECM. than the response that is a direct into the American Academy of Recent performances include statement of conditions, following Arts and Letters (2019), the 2017 Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer in instead her Buddhist grounding in Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize collaboration with Anne Bogart's art as spiritual practice. Subtly, in and a 2015 National Medal of Arts SITI Company and The Bang on recent years, she has been offering from President Barack Obama. In a Can All-Stars. Katie is also audiences a genre that has a certain conjunction with her 50th season of a member of the professional luminosity and softness, emotion performing and creating work, she Cathedral Choir of St. John the without sentimentality, sweetness was named Carnegie Hall’s 2014-15 Divine under the direction of along with the dissonance. Her work Debs Composer’s Chair. Celebrated Kent Tritle. honors the human need for the internationally, Monk’s work has feelings of joy and love and beauty. been presented at major venues ALLISON SNIFFIN, a multi- In the integrity of its regard, Cellular throughout the world. instrumentalist, singer, and Songs is of this world but also composer, has been a member of beyond this world, like all poetic ALLISON EASTER is a dancer, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble works of the imagination. • singer, teacher, director, and since 1996. Sniffin has received producer. She has worked with grants from Meet the Composer Bonnie Marranca is founding Meredith Monk since 1985’s revival and Concert Artists Guild for her publisher and editor of the Obie- of Quarry, and was a performer compositions. She is a frequent Award winning PAJ Publications and and rehearsal director for STOMP, arranger/orchestrator for The PAJ: A Journal of Performance and the Off-Broadway percussion Stonewall Chorale and Melodia Art, which celebrated its 40th year show. Allison has directed and/or Women’s Choir, NYC. in 2016. She has written or edited produced at The Ensemble Studio 15 books on theater and the arts. Theater and The NY Fringe Festival, JO STEWART is a poet and theater taught at NYU Tisch School of the maker. She uses a combination of ©2017 Brooklyn Academy of Music, Arts, and is on the faculty at Pace gesture, voice, and text to make Inc. All rights reserved. University. performance that investigates entrapment, borders, and freedom. Jo has previously been an artist in

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residence at Azule (2019), the Old MEREDITH BELIS (production/ CREDITS American Can Factory (2019), the stage manager) works as a stage YOSHIO YABARA Anderson Center at Tower View manager and theater technician in Costume Designer (2018), among others. She is the performance spaces around New JOE LEVASSEUR newest member of Meredith Monk & York City. Artists she has worked Lighting Designer Vocal Ensemble. with include Wendy Whelan, Brian Brooks, Neil Greenberg, Dean ELI WALKER Sound Designer YOSHIO YABARA (costume design, Moss, and Gwen Welliver. She is scenography) received a B.A. in a graduate of Bennington College MEREDITH BELIS Production/Stage Manager Linguistics in his native Japan, and and is the Production Manager for studied stage design at the German the Dance Department at Sarah MEREDITH MONK state art universities in Stuttgart Lawrence College. Video Scenarios and West Berlin. He began his KATHERINE FREER professional career as a costume KATHERINE FREER Video Design designer for the Oscar-winning film (video design) is a multimedia BEN STECHSCHULTE The Tin Drum. Monk collaborations designer working in theater, Cinematography include ATLAS, the feature filmBook events, and installation. Her work Developed in collaboration with of Days, impermanence, Songs of is driven by the love of storytelling Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Ascension, and On Behalf of Nature. and belief in its power to shift Allison Sniffin, and Jo Stewart. Mr. Yabara has also worked as a reality. Frequent collaborators All compositions by Meredith Monk costume designer, stage designer, include Ping Chong, Liz Lerman, © 2018 Meredith Monk Music (ASCAP) or art director for many theatrical Tim Bond, Kamilah Forbes, and Incorporated in 1971, The House and film productions in Europe, the Talvin Wilks. She is a Helen Hayes Foundation for the Arts is a nonprofit USA, and Asia. nominee and an Innovative Theater arts organization with a mission to Award nominee. promote, disseminate and celebrate JOE LEVASSEUR (lighting design) the work of the iconic American artist Meredith Monk. The House provides has collaborated with many dance BEN STECHSCHULTE development, management, production, and performance artists, and is (cinematography) is a portrait, and administrative services for Meredith pleased to be working for the first editorial and documentary Monk and Meredith Monk & Vocal time with Meredith Monk. He has photographer and filmmaker Ensemble. In addition to the presentation of new work, The House is committed received two Bessie awards for based in the Adirondacks and New to building a legacy for Ms. Monk and his lighting design work. Ongoing York City. His work has been in sharing her prolific body of work with projects include lighting work for publications including the New future generations of artists, scholars, and the general public. Brian Brooks, Big Dance Theater, York Times Magazine, TIME, and and Pavel Zustiak/Palissimo. New York Magazine. This is his Meredith Monk/The House first project with Monk. [email protected] ELI WALKER (sound design) meredithmonk.org facebook.com/meredithmonk is a graduate of Williams College. KIRSTIN KAPUSTIK (executive Twitter @meredith_monk Over the last few years he has director) has worked for more Instagram @meredithmonk toured with Meredith Monk & than ten years as a producer, Vocal Ensemble to such remote curator, administrator and Chris Schimpf, Sacks & Co., Press Representative places as Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, and educator. She has worked at [email protected] Budapest. He has also worked for Center for Performance Research, such musicians as Natalie Merchant, The Whitney Museum, and New Rena Shagan and Associates, Domestic Booking Florence and the Machine, York Live Arts, among others. [email protected] and Jay-Z. Kirstin joined Meredith Monk/The House Foundation for the Arts as Executive Director in 2017. CAROLINAPERFORMINGARTS.ORG 19