Friday Evening, January 20, 2017 at 8:00 Power Center, Ann Arbor ON BEHALF OF NATURE Performed by

Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble A production of

The House Foundation for the Arts

31st Performance of the 138th Annual Season International Theater Series This evening’s presenting sponsor is the Renegade Ventures Fund, established by Maxine and Stuart Frankel. This evening’s supporting sponsor is the Ilene H. Forsyth Theater Endowment Fund. This evening’s performance is funded in part by the Building Audiences for Sustainability initiative of The Wallace Foundation. Media partnership is provided by Ann Arbor’s 107one and Metro Times. Special thanks to Grace Lehman and the Ann Arbor Y, Chrisstina Hamilton and the U-M Penny Stamps Speaker Series, and Clare Croft for their participation in events surrounding this evening’s performance. Special thanks to Tiffany Ng, assistant professor of carillon and university carillonist, for coordinating the pre-concert music on the Charles Baird Carillon. On Behalf of Nature appears by arrangement with Rena Shagan Associates, Inc. In consideration of the artists and the audience, please refrain from the use of electronic devices during the performance. The photography, sound recording, or videotaping of this performance is prohibited. PROGRAM

On Behalf of Nature

This evening’s performance is approximately 75 minutes in duration and will be performed without intermission.

PERFORMERS

Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble Voices / Sidney Chen, Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Meredith Monk, Bruce Rameker, Allison Sniffin Winds / Bohdan Hilash Percussion / John Hollenbeck Keyboards, Violin, / Allison Sniffin

CREATIVE TEAM

Music and Direction / Meredith Monk Lighting Design / Elaine Buckholtz Sound Design / Jody Elff Costumes and Scenography / Yoshio Yabara Score Preparation and Music Director / Allison Sniffin Production Manager / Philip Sandström Technical Director / Johnny Chanthavong Video Editing / Meredith Monk and Michael Grenadier Production Coordinator and Company Manager / Peter Sciscioli

Following this evening’s performance, please feel free to remain in your seats and join us for a post-performance discussion with Ms. Monk.

3 ARTIST STATEMENT: MEREDITH MONK

As I began working on On Behalf of One of the early inspirations for On Nature, I asked myself the question: Behalf of Nature was an essay by the “how would one create an ecological poet Gary Snyder, entitled “Writers art work that didn’t make more waste and the War Against Nature.” In it in the world?” Live performances he writes about the role of an artist leave no traces except, hopefully, in being that of a “spokesperson for the minds of audience members. This non-human entities communicating ephemeral aspect is both poignant to the human realm through dance and exhilarating. Sometimes though, or song.” This act of compassion, the desire for novelty and surface of “speaking on behalf of nature,” excitement leads to buying a lot of embodies and gives voice to those new things, spending a great deal of forces that often go unrecognized. On money for an experience that lasts Behalf of Nature is a meditation on our only a few hours. I wondered how one intimate connection to nature, its inner could make an alternative to that. structures, the fragility of its ecology, I started thinking about the French and our interdependence. anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and his notion of “bricolage”: the process of assembling or making something from what is already at hand. In pre-industrial societies, one object could function in many different ways by an act of imagination. We now speak of this process as re-purposing. Yoshio Yabara, the costume designer for On Behalf of Nature, implemented this concept by creating new garments with unique shapes for each performer, fashioned from his or her old clothing. Each costume inherently included aspects of that performer’s personal history contained in the original garments. This idea of spiraling around to the past to make something completely new is also a way of appreciating what is here in the present and working with what we have. The same principle extends to other elements in On Behalf of Nature.

Photo (next spread): Meredith Monk; photographer: Julieta Cervantes.

4 ARTISTS

Meredith Monk is a composer, singer, she has created such works as Juice: A director/choreographer, and creator of Theatre Cantata In 3 Installments (1969) new opera, music-theater works, films, and Ascension Variations (2009) for the and installations. Recognized as one of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the most unique and influential artists American Archeology #1: Roosevelt Island of our time, she is a pioneer in what is (1994). Ms. Monk’s award-winning films, now called “extended vocal technique” including Ellis Island (1981) and her first and “interdisciplinary performance.” Ms. feature, Book of Days (1988), have been Monk creates works that thrive at the seen throughout the world. Her music can intersection of music and movement, also be heard in films by such directors image and object, light and sound, as Jean-Luc Godard, David Byrne, and the discovering and weaving together new Coen Brothers. modes of perception. Her groundbreaking Since graduating Sarah Lawrence exploration of the voice as an instrument, College in 1964, Ms. Monk has received as an eloquent language in and of itself, numerous honors including the expands the boundaries of musical prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Award, composition, creating landscapes of two Guggenheim Fellowships, three sound that unearth feelings, energies, and “Obies” (including an award for Sustained memories for which there are no words. Achievement), and two “Bessie” awards Over the last 50 years, she has been hailed for Sustained Creative Achievement. More as “a magician of the voice” and “one of recently Ms. Monk was named one of America’s coolest composers.” Celebrated National Public Radio’s “50 Great Voices,” internationally, her work has been and received a 2012 Doris Duke Artist presented by BAM, Lincoln Center Festival, Award, a 2011 Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Houston Grand Opera, London’s Barbican Award for the Arts, and an inaugural USA Centre, and at major venues around the Prudential Fellow award in 2006. world. Among her many accolades, she was Among the many highlights of Ms. Monk’s recently named an Officer of the Order of performances from the last 20 years is her Arts and Letters by the Republic of France Vocal Offering for His Holiness the Dalai and the 2012 “Composer of the Year” by Lama as part of the World Festival of Sacred Musical America. In conjunction with her Music in Los Angeles in October 1999. 50th season of creating and performing, Several marathon performances of her work she was appointed the 2014–15 Richard have taken place in New York at the World and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Financial Center (1991), Lincoln Center Music Carnegie Hall. In September 2015, Ms. Festival (2000), Carnegie’s Zankel Hall (2005 Monk received the National Medal of Arts and 2015), Symphony Space (2008), and the from President Obama. Whitney Museum (2009). In February 2012, In 1968 Ms. Monk founded The House, a Ms. Monk was honored with a remix and company dedicated to an interdisciplinary interpretations CD, MONK MIX, featuring 25 approach to performance. In 1978 she artists from the jazz, pop, DJ, and new music founded Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble worlds. In March 2012, she premiered Realm to expand her musical textures and forms. Variations for six voices and small ensemble, As a pioneer in site-specific performance, commissioned by the San Francisco

5 6 7 Symphony, and performed in John Cage’s by ethnographic research in trance dance Song Books as part of the Symphony’s and rituals of South Asia, particularly American Mavericks Festival. She is the Sri Lanka. Since 1981, she has toured subject of two new books of interviews, solo work throughout Europe and the Conversations with Meredith Monk, by arts US, also directing large ensemble work critic and Performing Arts Journal editor reinterpreting myths and legends. Her film Bonnie Marranca, and Une voix mystique, by work, including documentaries, has been French author Jean-Louis Tallon. A recording included in festivals throughout the world. of On Behalf of Nature was released in She has received funding through the NEA, November 2016 on ECM Records. Art Matters Inc., Jerome Foundation, NYFA, and the Asian Cultural Council, winning a Sidney Chen (vocals) is a founding member 2004 Humanities Fellowship and a 2005 of The M6, a vocal sextet dedicated to Travel Grant. Ms. Fisher continues to teach Meredith Monk’s music. On Behalf of and collaborate with artists on community Nature is his first production as a member intergenerational and intercultural projects, of Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, after both domestically and internationally, and performing in Monk’s Realm Variations with recently served as a Fulbright Scholar in the San Francisco Symphony. Previously, Sri Lanka. Mr. Chen sang in the Meredith Monk Young Artists Concert at Carnegie’s Zankel Katie Geissinger (vocals) has performed Hall in 2006, and in with Meredith Monk worldwide in concert at BAM in 2009. He has also performed and theater pieces such as , mercy, Monk’s music for solo voice at Oakland’s the Grammy-nominated impermanence, Garden of Memory. More recently, Mr. Songs of Ascension, On Behalf of Nature, Chen performed in the 45th anniversary and The Politics of Quiet, which received a celebration of Terry Riley’s In C organized Bessie award. Career highlights include the by the Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall, premiere of Bang on a Can’s Obie-winning a staged production of David Lang’s the The Carbon Copy Building (Canteloupe), little match girl passion by San Francisco appearing in Philip Glass and Robert Lyric Opera which toured to Denmark, and Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach (Elektra in Berio’s Sinfonia for eight soloists and Nonesuch), and performances as a soloist with the San Francisco new in Bach’s Magnificat, Honegger’s Le Roi music ensemble Volti. He has recorded David, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar with The M6 and Meredith Monk & Vocal at Carnegie Hall. Other credits include Ensemble on Songs of Ascension. Jonathan Miller’s staging of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at BAM, John Tavener’s Ellen Fisher (vocals) is an interdisciplinary The Veil of the Temple at Lincoln Center, and artist whose work combines dance Ann Hamilton’s the event of a thread, with with visual components. She began music by David Lang, at the Park Avenue performing with Meredith Monk/The Armory. Her Broadway credits include Baz House in the 1970s, in such works as The Luhrmann’s production of La Bohème and Plateau Series and Recent Ruins, and Coram Boy. Recent performances include more recently has appeared in mercy, Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer in collaboration impermanence, and Songs of Ascension. with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company and The Ms. Fisher’s performance work is informed Bang on a Can All-Stars.

8 Bohdan Hilash (winds) is a clarinetist impermanence, and Songs of Ascension. and multi-instrumentalist who joined He received degrees in percussion (BM) the Vocal Ensemble in 2002. As part of and jazz composition (MM) from the his diverse career he has performed on Eastman School of Music and moved four continents throughout the world as to New York City in the early 1990s. a performer of orchestral and chamber Since then, he has gained widespread music, opera, contemporary music, jazz, recognition as the driving force behind musical theater, and as a soloist. Mr. Hilash the unclassifiable Claudia Quintet and has appeared as a chamber and orchestral the ambitious John Hollenbeck Large musician and as a soloist at many of the Ensemble, groups with roots in jazz, world world’s pre-eminent concert venues music, and contemporary composition. and music festivals including those of He has earned four Grammy nominations: Bayreuth, Spoleto, Tokyo, Evian, Lincoln for his Large Ensemble’s releases A Center, Rome, and Aspen. As an orchestral Blessing (Omnitone, 2005) and eternal musician, Mr. Hilash has performed with interlude (Sunnyside Records, 2009); for some of the world’s leading his composition Falling Men commissioned including the London Symphony Orchestra by the Orchestre National de Jazz and and the New York Philharmonic with funded by the Chamber Music America conductors including Leonard Bernstein, French-American Jazz Exchange (2010); Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Alan Gilbert, and for his arrangement of Jimmy Webb’s and Leonard Slatkin. He is particularly The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress commissioned active in the field of contemporary by the hr-BigBand of Frankfurt, Germany music and has worked with many of its (2013). His most notable awards include leading practitioners including Speculum a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2010 Musicae, Bang on a Can, and the Chamber ASCAP Jazz Vanguard Award, and a 2012 Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. performed with jazz artists such as Dizzy His recent works include commissions Gillespie, Phil Woods, Dave Holland, Lee by Bang on a Can and the People’s Konitz, and Kenny Wheeler. In the theater Commissioning Fund; Ethos Percussion Mr. Hilash has worked as a featured Group funded by the Jerome Foundation; performer in collaboration with several Youngstown State University; Melbourne leading theater companies, playwrights, Jazz Festival; Scotland’s Edinburgh Jazz and directors of the New York stage Festival; University of Rochester, New York; including Arthur Miller and Lee Breuer. Mr. and Ensemble Cairn of France. He was a Hilash’s recordings may be heard on the professor of jazz drums and improvisation ECM, Chandos, RCA Victor, CRI, Mode, CBC, at the Jazz Institute Berlin from 2005–16 Finlandia, RCA, New World, CCNC, TBM, and in 2015 joined the faculty of McGill Capstone, and RP labels. University’s Schulich School of Music.

Genre-crossing composer and Bruce Rameker (vocals) began performing percussionist John Hollenbeck with Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble in (percussion), renowned in both the jazz 2008. He has appeared as both a baritone and new music worlds, has been working and a countertenor on the stages of with Meredith Monk since 1998 and has Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Town Hall, appeared in Magic Frequencies, mercy, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the

9 Edinburgh and Spoleto Festivals in a diverse Elaine Buckholtz (lighting designer) repertoire that includes ancient music, is a multimedia artist living in Boston, operetta, oratorio, tango, and new music. A Massachusetts. Her work combines the frequent collaborator with many composers, mediums of moving light, video, and he has premiered new vocal works of Ben sculpture. She has shown work at the Yarmolinsky, John Kennedy, Richard Pearson Electric Works Gallery in San Francisco, Thomas, Anna Dembska, William George, ROCA, Nyack New York, Yerba Buena Holly Herndon, Roberto Scarcella Perino, Center for the Arts, Pierogi Leipzig, The and Luna Pearl Woolf. Mr. Rameker has sung San Francisco Arts Commission, New with the Skylight Opera Theatre, Chicago Langton Arts, and The Wexner Center Opera Theater, New York City Opera, for the Arts. She attended The California Anchorage Opera, San Francisco Ballet, College of the Arts on a Jacob K. Javits Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, Waverly Fellowship from 2002–04 and received Consort, Voices of Ascension, Musica Sacra, her MFA from Stanford University in 2006. and New York Ensemble for Early Music. She currently teaches at Mass Art in the Recordings include A Seeker’s Faith, One Studio for Interrelated Media program as Body by John Kennedy, Just Another Hour an associate professor. She has worked with Trillium Ensemble, ¡Iberia! with Waverly as a lighting and visual designer in the Consort, Klaas de Vries’ opera A King, Riding, Bay area for 20 years and has also worked and Meredith Monk’s Songs of Ascension. with Merce Cunningham and Meredith Born in Wisconsin, he is a graduate of Monk recreating their visual environments the Curtis Institute of Music and the San internationally. Francisco Conservatory of Music. Jody Elff (sound designer) is an audio Allison Sniffin( vocals and instruments), a engineer and sound artist living and multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer, working in New York City. His live audio has been a member of Meredith Monk & production and recording credits include Vocal Ensemble since 1996, performing in work with Yo-Yo Ma, Laurie Anderson, Bang The Politics of Quiet, A Celebration Service, on a Can, Tan Dun, and many others. He is Magic Frequencies, mercy, , the resident sound designer for the National Book of Days, impermanence, and Songs Theater of the United States of America, of Ascension. She has collaborated with and has also composed and performed Meredith Monk in the orchestration of music for film and dance. He has mixed Monk’s , Night, WEAVE, Realm and mastered for Osvaldo Golijov, Variations, and Backlight; edited an including the soundtrack for the Francis of her music; and prepared numerous Ford Coppola filmTetro . He designed and a capella and instrumental works for engineered the sonic landscape for the publication. Ms. Snifffin has received grants Theater of the New Ear, a stage presentation from Meet the Composer and Concert written by Charlie Kaufman, featuring Meryl Artists Guild for her compositions and has Streep. He recorded, mixed, and mastered recently composed commissioned pieces the album Off The Map by the Silk Road for Melodia Women’s Choir and Union Ensemble, which received a 2011 Grammy Theological Seminary. She is organist and nomination in the “Best Album – Classical pianist at Middle Collegiate Church and Crossover” category. His fine art sound Temple Shaaray Tefila in NYC. installations have been shown in various

10 galleries and museums internationally, productions in Europe, the US, and Asia, including a commissioned sound piece including the Civil Wars, Robert Wilson’s permanently installed in a public parking King Lear, Oedipus Rex, Madamme de Sade facility in Lyon, France. by Tadashi Suzuki, Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro produced and conducted by Daniel Philip Sandström (lighting realization/ Barenboim at the Staatsoper Unter Den production manager) is a New York-based Linden Berlin, Bin ich Schoen?, Nackt, and visual artist and producer, specializing Bliss by Doris Doerrie. For more information in theatrical producing/operations, please visit www.yoshioyabara.com. theater consulting, event planning, and entertainment design since 1980. An award-winning designer with Designing with Light, Mr. Sandström has created lights and visuals for hundreds of theater, dance, and performance events including Bill Irwin, Whoopi Goldberg, Mark Morris Dance Group, David Parsons, David Van Tieghem, David Gordon, David Lindsay Abaire, John Jasperse, Sandra Bernhard, Eric Bogosian, Tanya Barfield, Urban Bush Women, American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet, The Flying Karamazov Brothers, and Valeria Vasilevski. His consulting company SOLUTIONS provides in-depth analysis and project management for theater design and construction, planning, and operations.

Yoshio Yabara (costume designer/ scenographer) received a BA in linguistics in his native Japan, and studied stage design at the German state art universities in Stuttgart and West Berlin. He began his professional career as a costume designer for the Oscar-winning filmThe Tin Drum, directed by Volker Schlöndorf. His first work for stage was in the 1970s and early 1980s at the Schaubühne, West Berlin, where he first met Ms. Monk and collaborated on her opera Vessel. Their subsequent collaborations include ATLAS, the feature filmBook of Days, impermanence, and Songs of Ascension. Mr. Yabara has also worked as a costume designer, stage designer, or art director for many theatrical and film

11 THE HOUSE FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, INC. www.meredithmonk.org

Incorporated in 1971, The House Foundation for the Arts provides production and management services for Meredith Monk, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, and The House Company. Executive Director / Daniel Arnow Projects Director / Peter Sciscioli Production Manager / Zoe Mackler General Manager / Cora Walters Press Representative / Chris Schimpf / Sacks & Co. Exclusive US Tour Representation / Rena Shagan Associates, Inc.

MEREDITH MONK/THE HOUSE FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Meredith Monk, Artistic Director Sebastiaan Bremer, President Frederieke Sanders Taylor, Chair Haruno Arai, Secretary Bobbie Foshay Margery Perlmutter Lauren Pistoia Alex Voss Micki Wesson, President Emeritus Sali Ann Kriegsman, Trustee Emeritus Barbara G. Sahlman, Trustee Emeritus

All music compositions © Meredith Monk 2012 (ASCAP). Meredith Monk would like to acknowledge and thank the performers and designers for their invaluable contributions in the development of On Behalf of Nature. On Behalf of Nature premiered at UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance on January 18, 2013. Developmental support through residencies for On Behalf of Nature was generously provided by: UCLA CAP, Centre Culturel Andre Malraux (Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy, France), Le Théâtre De Lorient, Centre Dramatique National (Lorient, France), Park Avenue Armory, Duke University, and Roulette Intermedium. Commissioning funds for the development of On Behalf of Nature were provided by: The Brooklyn Academy of Music for the 2014 Next Wave Festival; ASCAP/American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers; The National Endowment for the Arts; New Music USA; and New York State Council on the Arts. Additional support provided by: Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through USArtists International in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Individual support for the creation of On Behalf of Nature has been provided by: The James E. Robison Foundation, Haruno Arai, Jonathan Caplan, Sara Coffey, Sage Cowles, Anthony Creamier, Molly Davies, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Olivia Georgia, Goodale Family Foundation, Augusta H. Gross and Leslie B. Samuels, Jim Hodges, Ippei Iwashiro, Ada and Alex Katz, Abby Karp, Frances Kazan, Sali Ann Kriegsman, Toby Devan Lewis, Dorothy Lichtenstein, Frederic and Barbara Newman, Jonathan Nye, Mark Palermo, Donald Pels, Kira Perov and Bill Viola, Elizabeth Peyton, Barbara Sahlman, Sue and Steve Simring, Robert Evans and Gail P. Sinai, Catherine Skove, Ellynne C. Skove, Frederieke Sanders Taylor, and Micki Wesson.

12 UMS ARCHIVES

This evening’s performance marks Meredith Monk’s fifth appearance under UMS auspices, following her UMS debut in October 1996 in performances of The Politics of Quiet at the Power Center. She returned in February 2000 for a performance of Magic Frequencies: A Science Fiction Chamber Opera at the Power Center. Ms. Monk most recently appeared at UMS as part of the San Francisco Symphony’s American Mavericks Festival in March 2012 in a performance of John Cage’s Song Books at Hill Auditorium, and in a performance of her work Realm Variations at Rackham Auditorium with the Vocal Ensemble and members of the San Francisco Symphony.

13 MAY WE ALSO RECOMMEND...

3/18 Steve Reich at 80: Music for 18 Musicians with Eighth Blackbird and Third Coast Percussion 3/30–4/1 Complicite/Simon McBurney: The Encounter 4/12 A Far Cry with Roomful of Teeth

Tickets available at www.ums.org.

ON THE EDUCATION HORIZON...

1/21 Sensory-Friendly Open Rehearsal: Takács Quartet (Rackham Auditorium, 915 E. Washington Street, 12:00 noon)

1/21 You Can Dance: Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble (Ann Arbor Y, 400 W. Washington Street, 2–3:30 pm)

1/21 Pre-Concert Lecture Series: Exploring Beethoven’s String Quartets (Rackham Amphitheatre, Fourth Floor, 915 E. Washington Street, 7:00 pm)

2/16 Penny Stamps Speaker Series: Ping Chong (Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty Street, 5:10 pm)

3/18 You Can Dance: Kidd Pivot (Ann Arbor Y, 400 W. Washington Street, 2–3:30 pm)

Educational events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.

14

THIS EVENING’S VICTORS FOR UMS: Renegade Ventures Fund, established by Maxine and Stuart Frankel — Ilene H. Forsyth Theater Endowment Fund — The Wallace Foundation

Supporters of this evening’s performance of On Behalf of Nature.