Arts & Lectures
2005-2006 Performing Arts Season News Release
For Immediate Release

December 22, 2005

Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble perform the multi-media Impermanence, an emotional powerhouse, at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

Composer, singer and director/choreographer Meredith Monk—celebrating 40 years of groundbreaking art—will perform Impermanence with her Vocal Ensemble on Saturday, February 11 at 8 pm at UCSB Campbell Hall. Her work with hospice patients in London and the death of her long-time partner inspired Impermanence. Using music, movement and text, the work creates a celebratory and moving meditation on life. Dance Insider calls the work “a mixture of incredible intensity and humor.”

Embodying a broad spectrum of emotions, the phenomenal Meredith Monk and her dynamic Vocal Ensemble take the audience on a poetic journey to a place where music and movement reflect the delicacy and power of the human spirit. Each section of the work, announced cabaret-style by a spoken title (Last Song; Liminal; Seeds; Particular Dance; Disequilibrium Song; Mieke’s Melody #5), provides a non-narrative look at the different facets of impermanence and the joy and wonder of being. Accompanied by voice, piano, clarinet, breath, bicycle tire and other inventive instrumentation, the many scenes—a playful dance of energy unbound; voices rising from the dark singing a song of beginning and opening; an elegant dance of small gestures, performers balancing on chairs, seemingly floating in space—create a collage of emotion, image and sound that transports us on a journey that is haunting and mysterious, but at its core, essentially human.

For her latest project, Monk works once again with the multitalented singers/ performers/instrumentalists in the Vocal Ensemble: Theo Bleckmann, Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Ching Gonzalez, Bohdan Hilash, John Hollenbeck and Allison Sniffin. On the heels on Monk’s last major work, the highly acclaimed mercy, Impermanence presents another opportunity to feed our senses with Monk’s rich expression of the inexpressible.

A pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance,” Meredith Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound in an effort to discover and weave together new modes of perception. Her groundbreaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies and memories for which we have no words. About her four decade career The New York Times writes, “She has kept to her own course, with the singleness of purpose and richness of vision of a truly great artist.”

Monk has received numerous awards throughout her career, including the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Award in 1995, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Brandeis Creative Arts Award, three Obies (including an award for Sustained Achievement), two Villager Awards, two Bessie Awards for Sustained Creative Achievement, the 1986 National Music Theatre Award, the 1992 Dance Magazine Award and a 2005 ASCAP Concert Music Award. She holds honorary Doctor of Arts degrees from Bard College, the University of the Arts, The Juilliard School, the San Francisco Art Institute and the Boston Conservatory.

Monk is a pioneer in site-specific performance, creating works such as Juice: a Theater Cantata in 3 Installments (1969) and American Archeology #1: Roosevelt Island (1994). She is also an accomplished filmmaker who has made a series of award-winning films including Ellis Island (1981) and her first feature Book of Days (1988), which was shown at the New York Film Festival and selected for the Whitney Museum’s Biennial. A retrospective exhibition Meredith Monk: Archeology of an Artist opened at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in 1996. July 2004 marked the beginning of an eighteen-month celebration of Monk’s 40th year of performing and presenting work culminating in a four hour music marathon at New York’s Zankel Hall in November 2005.

Performance-goers are invited to stay after the show for a Meet-the-Artists discussion.

Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble are presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by KCSB 91.9 FM and the Best Western South Coast Inn. This event is supported by the Visiting Artist Program of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB. Ms. Monk is a Regents’ Lecturer in the UCSB College of Creative Studies. Her residency is also funded by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional funding is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Ford Foundation. The performance is also generously supported by the Towbes Foundation.

Tickets are $38 for the general public and $19 for UCSB students who must show valid ID at ticket purchase and the evening of the show. Ticket prices are subject to convenience fees. Tickets are on sale now and can also be purchased at the door, if still available.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.

©2005 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara