Tomorrow, Saturday, the exhibition “Meredith Monk: Calling” opens in Amsterdam with a concert at the Oude Kerk.
The Oude Kerk – the “old church”, the oldest building in Amsterdam, consecrated in 1306 – and the Hartwig Art Foundation will open tomorrow, Saturday, Meredith Monk: Calling, the first retrospective exhibition in Europe of the New York composer’s work, showcasing Monk’s artistic legacy and her interpretative practice of music theatre and performance, in which she has constantly sought harmony between the spiritual, the earth and human existence, along with immersive video and sound installations. Three live concerts are also planned as an integral part of the exhibition, the first of which will take place during the opening at 20:00, featuring the composer and singer and members of her Vocal Ensemble Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin, with a programme including excerpts from her opera ATLAS (1991), and other albums and/or performances such as Cellular Songs (2018), The Games (1984), Impermanence (2004-2006), Light Songs (1988), The Politics of Quiet (1996) and Volcano Songs: Duets (1993).
The second concert will feature her album Piano Songs and will be performed twice: on Fridays 1 December 2023 and 16 February 2024, in December as a morning concert and in February as part of an evening programme. Meredith Monk said of these compositions that she had delved ” into different relationships and possibilities between the two pianos; material going back and forth, dialogues, interlocking phrases, shifts of figure and ground. In some pieces, I emphasised the individuality of each piano, writing for one player as ‘singer’, the other as ‘accompaniment’; in other pieces, I wanted the two pianos to make one big sound”. In the concerts at the Oude Kerk, Piano Songs will be performed by local musicians who have been instructed and trained by a member of Meredith Monk’s Ensemble.
The third concert, finally, will consist of a new performance of A Celebration Service, a work premiered in 1996 which was created to commemorate the arrival of the new millennium, evoking the universal quest for spiritual renewal and eternal beauty in the form of a luminous “service/performance”. A Celebration Service will be offered as a conclusion to the exhibition on 15, 16 and 17 March 2024. The cast for this performance includes members of the local community – singers, readers, dancers and keyboardists – and will be directed by Tom Bogdan, a long-time member of the Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble. For this work, Meredith Monk drew on her then thirty-year career and her own compositions and spiritual traditions spanning centuries and cultures, interweaving her original songs, chants and choreography with readings drawn from Buddhist texts, Hasidic proverbs, Zen poetry, African and Native American prayers, and a Christian prayer by the medieval nun and composer Hildegard of Bingen, to create a celebration of community and the search for meaning and connection through ritual.
Parallel exhibition in Munich
Meredith Monk: Calling has been curated by Beatrix Ruf, director of the Hartwig Art Foundation, and will have a parallel show in Munich at the Haus der Kunst, where it will be offered, in a shorter form, between 10 November 2023 and 3 March 2024. On the opening day, Friday 10 November, Monk will discuss his work live with the American journalist Hilton Als. On 16 and 17 November there will be screenings of four of his most important musical films: Paris (1982), Turtle Dreams (1983), Ellis Island (1981) and Book of Days (1988).