Monk in Pieces

Meredith Monk – composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist – is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural in?uence is largely unrecognized. With Monk’s music at its center, and featuring interviews with Björk and David Byrne, Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of Monk’s own work, and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery.

As a female artist in the male-dominated downtown arts scene of the 1960s and ‘70s, Monk had to ?ght for recognition and resources. Early reviews in The New York Times were vicious and sexist: “A disgrace to the name of dancing,” wrote Clive Barnes, and “so earnestly strange in a talented little-girl way,” wrote John Rockwell. Yet as her celebrated contemporary, Philip Glass, says, “she, among all of us, was – and still is – the uniquely gifted one.”