Ubu Web is All Avante Garde, All The Time [Insert Atonality Joke here]
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Artist:
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Album:Book of Dreams
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Track:Travelers 1, 2, 3
On Friday, I posted a great link to a Ronald Newman film of Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable on Ubu web. Well, I didn't have the time to check it out further until today. I'm happy to say it's an incredible resource of films of artists and performers that many people wouldn't have access too.Since this is such a find, and I saw there was a serious lacking of Meredith Monk here on Mog, I found this little piece on Ms. Monk from seminal director, Peter Greenaway's, film 4 American Composers, of which I owned on VHS, but have lost in subsequent moves.
Here's what wikipedia says about Meredith Monk:"Meredith Monk is primarily known for her vocal innovations, including a wide range of extended techniques, which she first developed in her solo performances before forming her own ensemble. In 1964, she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and in 1968 she founded The House, a company dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to performance.Monk's performances have influenced many artists, including Bruce Nauman, whom she met in San Francisco in 1968. In 1978 Monk formed Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble (modelled after similar ensembles of musical colleagues such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass) to explore new and wider vocal textures and forms which often were contrasted with minimal instrumental textures. Pieces from this time include Dolmen Music (1979), which also was recorded for her first album released at Manfred Eicher's record label ECM in 1981.In the 1980s, Monk wrote and directed two films, Ellis Island (1981), and Book of Days (1988), which developed from a single idea; "One day during summer of 1984, as I was sweeping the floor of my house in the country, the image of a young girl (in black and white) and a medieval street in the Jewish community (also in black and white) came to me", as Monk recounts in the liner notes of the ECM-recording. Apart from the film, different versions exist of this piece; two for the concert hall, and an album, produced by Meredith Monk and Manfred Eicher as "a film for the ears."In the early 1990s, Monk composed an opera called Atlas, which premiered in Houston Texas in 1991. She has also written pieces for instrumental ensembles and symphony orchestras. Her first symphonic works were Possible Sky (2003) and Stringsongs (2004), which was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. In 2005, events all over the world were celebrating the 40th anniversary of her career, including a concert in Carnegie Hall, featuring Björk, the composers Terry Riley, DJ Spooky (who has sampled her on his album Drums of Death), and John Zorn and the new music ensembles Alarm Will Sound and Bang on a Can All-Stars, along with the Pacific Mozart Ensemble.Monk has won many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, and she holds honorary Doctor of Arts degrees from Bard College, the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), The Juilliard School, the San Francisco Art Institute and the Boston Conservatory.Her music was used in films by the Coen Brothers (The Big Lebowski, 1998) and Jean-Luc Godard (Nouvelle Vague, 1990 and Notre musique, 2004).In a recent interview she said that her favourite music includes Brazilian music, especially Caetano Veloso's recordings, the music by Mildred Bailey ("the great jazz singer from the ‘30s and ‘40s"), and Bartók's cycle for piano Mikrokosmos.
--I'll upload a track later for your further listening pleasure.--
And here is a link to the index of artists featured on Ubu.com
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