16 Millimeter Earrings, for instance, was a real breakthrough for me because I finally found what I had been looking for: a poetic, abstract form that wove together a multitude of perceptual modes as an affirmation of our possibilities as human beings. MM It took many years to develop my vocabulary – in terms of both my voice and my interdisciplinary pieces. Courtesy: the artist and Haus der Kunst, Munich photograph: Charlotte Victoria Meredith Monk, Duet with Cat’s Scream and Locomotive, 1966, performance view. How did you shift from solo mode to mobilizing enormous numbers of people – as well as props, sets and projections – in your works? Your early performances were solo investigations in which you centred yourself – your body and voice – on stage. I’m evoking this particular image to ask you about scale. In a work comprising so many forms of expression – dance, film, theatre, music – I especially retained the ghostly image of an enormous white horse that appeared at one point on a large screen over the stage. MR I vividly recall seeing your opera ATLAS at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1992. My first idea was about resonance in space: how do you make a room sing? But, to me, what sound does in space is primary. They’re just taught: this is where you are positioned and you’re making sound. I’ve always found it very strange that people with Western European classical music training are rarely taught about space. But music is my first language: the language of my heart and my mind. Sometimes, these larger interdisciplinary ideas come into my mind and take many years to put together because they’re very complex. I’m always working on music, day after day. MM Actually, I would say that my composition work has become primary over time, because my music has become my primary source. To me, what sound does in space is primary: how do you make a room sing? In your case, your engagement with dance and theatre-making would appear to be primary? For me, the encounter generally starts with a compositional idea or figuration of sound that drives other decision-making. I say that as a composer interested in the kinds of spatial, social and other relations that one wants to take note of as a first-order encounter with a new site. MR It sounds like you’re describing a synthesis of movement and sound investigation. I was also influenced by my childhood training in Dalcroze Eurhythmics – a method of teaching music through the body, developed by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze in the early 20th century. The first part of my process was to go into a space, listen to it and try to hear what it needed or wanted. It was very much site-specific – that was my orientation in those days. It was a solo, but I used the whole gallery. The first piece I performed in New York was Break at Washington Square Galleries in 1964. I always say to my students and to those who work with me: space is our ally. Courtesy: the artist and Haus der Kunst, Munich cinematography: Kenneth Van Sickle Meredith Monk, 16 Millimeter Earrings, 1966, film still. MR How do you negotiate space as a composer, performer and choreographer, or equally, as a practitioner of movement or someone who, it seems to me, seeks to engage their full arsenal as a human being? My voice flew through the space that night, but the next day I was unfortunately really sick. I also remember it because I was getting a cold and I had to record a week or two later. Meredith Monk I’ll never forget it – partly because I was the last on stage, since Merce always asked me to sing a particular solo with him as the final performance of an evening of concerts we used to do together. Marina Rosenfeld I’m 100 percent certain that you won’t remember this but, back in 2009, I helped you with your microphone at the New York Park Avenue Armory memorial event for Merce Cunningham.
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