On Behalf Of Nature / Meredith Monk

MEREDITH MONK ENSEMBLE

1. Dark/Light 1   2. High Realm   3. Fractal Activity   4. Environs 1   5. Eon   6. Duet with Shifting Ground   7. Environs 2   8. Pavement Steps   9. Evolution   10. Ritual Zone   11. Water/Sky Rant   12. Memory Zone   13. Environs 3   14. Harvest   15. Dark/Light 2   16. High Realm Reprise   17. Fractal Mirror   18. Ringing   19. Spider Web Anthem

For five decades, vocalist-composer Meredith Monk has explored what she calls primordial utterance, or non-verbal vocal sounds that lay beneath and beyond language, expressing that for which we have no words. This exploration has led her to create music that The New Yorker describes as simultaneously visceral and ethereal, raw and rapt, an art that sings, dances and meditates on timeless forces. With her latest, multivalent ECM New Series album, Monk aimed to address ecology and climate change, she says: Believing that music speaks more directly than words, I worked to make a piece with a fluid, perceptual field that could expand awareness of what we are in danger of losing. On Behalf of Nature is a meditation on our intimate connection to nature, its inner structures, the fragility of its ecology and our interdependence. Voices and instruments have equal weight: sometimes each is heard alone; sometimes they are blended to form a new, mysterious sound; sometimes they are combined to create intricate, layered, yet transparent sonic landscapes.

Price: $16.98