Review: Meredith Monk at Llais Festival

Steve Penny

Llais Festival welcomed Meredith Monk to Cardiff’s Millennium Centre for her debut performance in Wales on 9 October. And what a performance it was.

Recognised as one of the most unique and influential artists of our time, composer/performer Meredith Monk offered one of her intimate concerts with renowned members of her vocal ensemble, Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin.

Hailed as “a magician of the voice” and “one of America’s coolest composers” Monk’s career has spanned fifty years and led to the creation of a unique musical universe. As such, it’s a huge coup for Cardiff to have hosted a rare live performance, marking her first in Wales, by the 82-year-old avant-garde legend.

Voice and movement

Monk is a performer who combines voice and movement, but most of her songs are songs without recognisable words. She creates intriguing pieces from hums, grunts, trills, breath and a variety of vocal tics, but with a huge vocal range. Often her pieces are unaccompanied, but sometimes she’ll play keyboard or sing with others.

Her seventy-five minute set spanned the last fifty years and some of her most loved pieces.

After unaccompanied solo pieces Wa-lie-oh and Click Song #1, she was joined by aforementioned long-term collaborators Katie Geissinger and Alison Sniffin for a series of duets, trios and solos from each, some accompanied by keyboards or violin. Monk’s musical legacy is in safe hands with collaborators like these.

It’s hard to pick highlights from such a mesmerising performance, but it was thrilling to hear Monk solo at the keyboard singing early favourite Gotham City Lullaby, the trio version of Choosing Companions from her opera ATLAS, and a frenetic version of Scared Song, which brilliantly captures mid eighties cold war anxiety.

Premiere

We were treated to a premiere of three new songs from her forthcoming album, Cellular Songs, which shows that as well as being individuals, we’re interdependent and part of a larger whole. For these and several other pieces, movement came to the fore as the ensemble traversed the stage and took up positions, shifting as the songs progressed.

The show closed with Happy Woman, and Monk clearly is a happy woman given the rapturous reception from the audience, who gave her a deserved standing ovation, which led to three encores. The last encore saw Monk solo again, showing her fun side with Insect Descending.

There’s no one like Meredith Monk and the now well-established Llais Festival will certainly have never witnessed a performance like this. Monk embodies the power, range and versatility of the voice in a way that is totally unique, and that surely is what Llais is all about.