★★★★★
Most of Meredith Monk's music is vocal in its conception, designed around her own voice and those of her collaborators. But many of the most distinctive qualities in her vocal music - its exuberant physicality, its subtly patterned repetitions and its air of tender playfulness - come through just as vividly in these short pieces for two pianos...
- www.sfgate.com
2014-05-25
★★★★★
Morse-coded, dot-dashdespatches receive punctuationtutorials from controlledclusters of menagerie chatter.Downtown Kate Bush givesa phalanx of felines the thirddegree. Unknowable half wordsdissolve into... Movementsmirror muttered morsels.
- recordcollectormag.com
2014-02-27
★★★★★
Monk has classical voice training, but I expect it was her folk and rock experience that taught her how to make these almost wordless songs sound so demotic, so literally unrefined--they obviously don't merely "express" emotion, but they don't merely distill it either. On record, the ostinato structures mean that the four shorter pieces composed between 1972 and 1975 come across better than the title work, which lasts 23:39 and features six voices with intermittent accompaniment...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Fantastic and largely forgotten work of hypnotic music for voice and glass, recorded in 1973. "'Our Lady Of Late' begins with Collin Walcott playing a rhythmic, tapping introduction to the commonplace object -- a goblet of water -- that will provide the backbone of the work. The suite then opens with one of the most transfixing sections. Monk coaxes a ringing vibration from the water glass by rubbing a finger along its rim, as she will do throughout the piece...
- www.forcedexposure.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
Recordings from '76/77. "Songs..." is a suite of solo voice pieces, showcasing her various extended techniques. Some excellent experimental vocals, some a bit too whimsical perhaps. "Tablet" is a 23 minute ensemble work for 4 female voices, piano & soprano recorder.
- www.forcedexposure.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
This album contains Meredith Monk's earliest compositions for voice. The songs that make up Key were composed and performed in a 3-year period between 1967 and 1970, when Monk collected them into this 45-minute "invisible theater" experience. Monk (travelling voice, electric organ, jews harp), Daniel Ira Sverdlik & Dick Higgins (companion voices), Collin Walcott (companion voice & mrdingam), Lanny Harrision and Mark Berger (vision monologues)...
- www.forcedexposure.com
2009-06-07
★★★★★
Track Listing: Braid 1 and leaping song; braid 2; urban march (shadow); masks; line 1; doctor / patient; line 2; woman at thedoor; line 3 and prisoner; epilogue; shaking; liquid air; urban march (light); core chant...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2009-06-05
★★★★★
Track Listing: last song; maybe 1; little breath; liminal; disequilibrium; particular dance; between song; passage; maybe 2; skeleton lines; slow dissolve; totentanz; sweep 1; rocking; sweep 2; Meike's melody #5...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2009-06-05
★★★★★
Track Listing: last song; maybe 1; little breath; liminal; disequilibrium; particular dance; between song; passage; maybe 2; skeleton lines; slow dissolve; totentanz; sweep 1; rocking; sweep 2; Meike's melody #5...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2009-06-05
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