FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 8, 2021 | CONTACT: Corinna Schulenburg, cschulenburg@tcg.org, 212-609-5941
New from PAJ Publications:
Conversations with Meredith Monk
(Expanded Edition)
by Bonnie Marranca
NEW YORK, NY – PAJ Publications, one of TCG’s partner publishers, is pleased to announce the publication of Conversations with Meredith Monk (Expanded Edition) by Bonnie Marranca.
This new, expanded edition of Conversations with Meredith Monk offers a fascinating portrait of the internationally renowned composer, performer, director, and filmmaker, from her early years to the present. First published in 2014, it now includes an eight-page color portfolio and has been updated with discussions of her latest music-theatre work, Cellular Songs, and a work-in-progress, Indra’s Net, in addition to the recent revival of her opera Atlas, at the Los Angeles Philharmonic—a work that the New York Times critic called “her masterpiece and one of the defining operatic experiments of the 20th century”—and the showing of the remastered film of Monk’s great work Quarry. The five long conversations that comprise the volume, the latest in PAJ’s “Performance Ideas” series, generate invaluable insights into artistic process, the human voice, interrelationships of time, space, and music, and the complexity of artistic legacies. What is a “contemporary” work? How does an artwork retain its integrity of form over time? —these are some of the questions Monk explores.
In these deeply engaging conversations, Monk speaks in great detail of her creation of music-theatre works, operas, and films, reflecting on the large-cast theatrical works and the more recent, poetically distilled, abstract pieces. In her preface to the new edition, “Performance as a Life Science,” Bonnie Marranca writes: “Now, against the background of life in extremis, it is evident that Monk had already acknowledged both the always unknown future and the resilience of human beings. For decades her body of work has been rooting itself in the recurrent themes of spiritual quest (Songs of Ascension), healing (The Politics of Quiet), compassion (mercy), plague (Book of Days), fragility of life (impermanence), cultural identity (Ellis Island), historical trauma (Quarry), ecology (On Behalf of Nature), and community (Cellular Songs).”
“If Monk is seeking a place in the classical firmament, classical music has much to learn from her. She conveys a fundamental humanity and humility that is rare in new-music circles.” —Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“Meredith Monk has given new voice to the spirit, knit the word together with her universal vision to music, and balanced movement and stillness in ways that illuminate and transform us all. Eternity will never be the same.” —Pico Iyer
Meredith Monk is a composer, performer, director, choreographer, and filmmaker, internationally celebrated for her new vocabularies of contemporary performance. In addition to her vocal pieces, music-theatre works, and operas, Monk has composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments, with commissions from Michael Tilson Thomas/San Francisco Symphony and New World Symphony, Kronos Quartet, St. Louis Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale, and Carnegie Hall, where she held the 2014-15 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair in conjunction with her fiftieth year of working in the arts. Her music can be heard in films by Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard, David Byrne, and the Coen Brothers. Monk has made more than a dozen recordings, most of them on the ECM New Series label, including the Grammy-nominated impermanence.
Monk is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, several Obies and Bessies, and Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters from the Republic of France. Among her many operas and music-theatre works are 16 Millimeter Earrings, ATLAS, Education of the Girlchild, mercy, and Songs of Ascension (both in collaboration with Ann Hamilton), The Politics of Quiet, Quarry, and Vessel, a pioneering site-specific piece. Her music-theatre works On Behalf of Nature, Cellular Songs, and the forthcoming Indra’s Net form a trilogy on the interdependence of human beings and nature. Monk’s filmography includes Book of Days, Ellis Island, and a collection of short silent films. Her visual art works and installations have been exhibited at the Walker Art Center, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, the Whitney Biennial, and the Frederieke Taylor Gallery in New York City.
In recent years, Meredith Monk has received three of the highest honors bestowed on an American living artist: induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.
PAJ Publications is an independent press (founded in 1976) publishing the periodical PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art as well as books of plays, essays, and interviews. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art is a triannual periodical offering expanded coverage of performance, video, dance, drama, film, music, photography, installations and media. Issues feature artists’ writings, critical essays, historical documentation, interviews, performance texts and plays. The journal is published for PAJ by special arrangement with MIT Press Journals: www.mitpressjournals.org/paj. Over more than four decades the book division of the press has published 158 volumes of plays and essays, by such authors as Maria Irene Fornes, Michael Chekhov, Sam Shepard, R.W. Fassbinder, Thomas Bradshaw, Mac Wellman.
Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, leads for a just and thriving theatre ecology. Since its founding in 1961, TCG’s constituency has grown from a handful of groundbreaking theatres to over 700 Member Theatres and affiliate organizations and over 7,000 Individual Members. Through its programs and services, TCG reaches over one million students, audience members, and theatre professionals each year. TCG offers networking and knowledge-building opportunities through research, communications, and events, including the annual TCG National Conference, one of the largest nationwide gatherings of theatre people; awards grants and scholarships to theatre companies and individual artists; advocates on the federal level; and through the Global Theater Initiative, TCG's partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, serves as the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute. https://circle.tcg.org/
Conversations with Meredith Monk
Expanded Edition
By Bonnie Marranca
192 pages
8-page color insert
January 2021
$18.00
Paperback
978-1-55554-166-8
PAJ Publications is an affiliated publisher with TCG. TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, an Ingram Brand. Phone orders: 866-400-5351. Individuals may call 212-609-5900 or visit our online bookstore at www.tcg.org. For postage and handling, please add $6.50 for the first book and $1.00 for each additional copy.