Monk in Pieces

The profound cultural influence of the composer, performer and interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk is often overlooked. As a female artist, she had to fight for recognition and resources in the male-dominated art scene of downtown New York of the 1960s and 1970s. Early reviews in “The New York Times” were vicious and sexist, with Clive Barnes calling her “a disgrace to the name of dancing” and John Rockwell opining that she was “so earnestly strange in a talented little-girl way”. And yet, as her celebrated contemporary Philip Glass says: “She, among all of us, was – and still is – the uniquely gifted one.” Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of her own work and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery. In the film’s final chapters, Monk confronts mortality. We see her warily entrust her masterpiece “Atlas” to the director Yuval Sharon and singer Joanna Lynn-Jacobs for a new production with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For 60 years, Monk has directed and performed in all her works; now she must learn to let go. What will happen to such singular creations after she is gone?