Meredith Monk has been called one of America’s most visionary and challenging performing artists. A new documentary about her life and art, slated to screen at Studio Two Three on Saturday, Nov. 15, offers an up-close glimpse into how the genius happens.
“Monk in Pieces,” a film about the New York-based composer, singer, choreographer, director and educator, has been garnering praise since its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. To shape the movie, director Billy Shebar was given unprecedented access to the elusive artist and her personal archives, while also featuring interviews with collaborators and admirers such as David Byrne and Björk.
“Monk is pretty much the textbook definition of a multimedia artist,” says P.J. Sykes of the CinemaNiche film collective, which is sponsoring the Studio Two Three screening. “She was that even before people knew what that was.”
Monk, still composing and creating at age 82, has been cited as a pioneer of interdisciplinary performance, combining the worlds of music, dance and theatre into a multi-sensual experience, and perfecting a unique style of extended vocalizing. The New York Times, not always a fan, reckoned that her grand work, “Atlas,” was “one of the defining operatic experiments of the 20th century.” In the course of her 60-year-career, she’s received numerous honors, including the National Medal of Arts. Recording for ECM Records, her music has touched culture both high and low, sampled by DJ Spooky, and used in two Jean-Luc Godard films as well as the soundtracks to the Coen Brothers’ “The Big Lebowski,” David Byrne’s “True Stories,” and TV’s “True Detective,” among others.
CinemaNiche was started in order to bring independent, hard-to-see music documentaries and cult films to Richmond. “Monk in Pieces” fits right in with previous cinematic offerings that the collective have featured at Studio Two Three and other locales, such as “Eno,” a unique look at producer Brian Eno, and “Sisters With Transistors,” an exploration of female pioneers in electronic music. “Monk is very similar to the women in ‘Sisters,'” says Roll. “Her music and her art has been connected to a lot of popular culture that people just don’t realize.”
The story behind the screening is bittersweet. Bill Lupoletti, the host of WRIR’s popular “Global A Go-Go” show, recommended the new documentary to CinemaNiche curators Sykes, Jeff Roll and Shane Brown. He also got them in contact with Serge Bulat, a Moldovan-American singer and multidisciplinary artist who studied with Monk at the Garrison Institute in New York. Bulat will make an appearance at a post-screening Q&A and answer questions about the artist’s legendary vocal techniques.
Sadly, Lupoletti died on Oct. 31 from a long battle with cancer. The CinemaNiche guys say that the screening of “Monk in Pieces” will be dedicated to him.
“Bill was the catalyst here to get it all done,” says Sykes, “and to educate us and to connect us with the distributor and to Serge. But, you know, his wife Alyssa [Salomon] had an influence on this that we weren’t aware of.”
Salomon confirms that she was indeed the big Monk fan in the family.
“But Bill was aware of her and listened to her because he was very interested in new and experimental music.” She describes a 1981 performance by Meredith Monk that she attended as a young art student as “astonishing.” Monk’s music, she says, is “minimalism, building with repetition and harmony… she was a contemporary with Philip Glass and Steve Reich and Robert Wilson. It’s based on the voice as an instrument and speaking to the human condition. So I find the music spiritual in a way, and very moving.”
Director Shebar says in a press statement that “Monk opened the doors of the Tribeca loft where she’s been working since 1972, to me and my film crew, allowing us to capture the rhythms of her daily life and the creation of her newest work, ‘Indra’s Net.'” He adds that, rather than attempting a comprehensive biographical film, “I’ve created a mosaic mirroring the structure of Monk’s own work. Each chapter is anchored by a single Monk song and offers a unique window on her life’s work.”
Sykes thinks that a wide range of people will enjoy “Monk in Pieces” because the artist’s approach touches so many experiences and disciplines. “There’s the music, but I think the thing that people might connect with the most is that Monk is also a choreographer and a filmmaker. She’s a visual performer.”
“Monk in Pieces” will screen at Studio Two Three on Saturday, Nov. 15, sponsored by CinemaNiche. $15. Doors open 7 p.m., film 8:05 p.m.
