About this Artist

Meredith Monk (composition, voice)  is a composer, singer, and creator of new opera, music-theater works, films and installations. Recognized as one of the most unique and influential artists of our time, she is a pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance”. 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 there are no words. Over the last six decades, Ms. Monk has been hailed as one of National Public Radio’s 50 Great Voices and “one of America’s coolest composers”. She is the recipient of numerous honors including a MacArthur Fellowship and an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Republic of France. Celebrated internationally, her work has been presented at major venues throughout the world. 

Monk has recorded with the ECM New Series label since 1981 and was recently honored with a 13-disc box set of her work, Meredith Monk: The Recordings, which includes the 2008 GRAMMY-nominated impermanence. Selected scores of her work are available through Boosey & Hawkes. She is also the subject of two books of interviews, Conversations with Meredith Monk (now in a new expanded edition), by arts critic and Performing Arts Journal editor Bonnie Marranca, and Une voix mystique, by French author Jean-Louis Tallon, released in January 2022. In conjunction with her 50th Season of creating and performing, Monk was appointed the 2014-15 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. Since that time she has received three of the highest honors bestowed on a living artist in the United States: induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2019), the 2017 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and a 2015 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama. In June 2023, Monk premiered her newest work, Indra’s Net, at the Holland Festival, the third part of a trilogy of music-theater works exploring our interdependent relationship with nature following the highly acclaimed On Behalf of Nature (2013) and Cellular Songs (2018). This fall, the first extensive European exhibition about Meredith Monk will be realized as a collaboration in two acts at Oude Kerk Amsterdam and Haus der Kunst München, together with the Hartwig Art Foundation.