Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk is a composer, singer, director/choreographer, filmmaker, and creator of new opera, music-theatre works, films and installations. Recognised as one of the most unique and influential artists of our time, she is a pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance.” Celebrated internationally, Monk’s work has been presented at major venues throughout the world. In conjunction with her 50th Season of creating and performing, she was appointed the 2014-15 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. Recently, Monk received three of the highest honours bestowed to a living artist in the United States: induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2019), the 2017 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and a 2015 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.

In 1968 Monk founded The House, a company dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to performance. As a pioneer in site-specific work, she has created such works as Juice: a theatre cantata in three installments (1969) and Ascension Variations (2009) for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as well as American Archeology: Roosevelt Island (1994), and Songs of Ascension (2008) for visual artist Ann Hamilton’s tower. Monk’s award-winning films, including Ellis Island (1981) and her first feature, Book of Days (1988), have screened at numerous film festivals and on PBS. The film of her seminal work, Quarry: an opera in three movements (1976), was restored and made available for streaming in 2019. Her films, installations and drawings have been shown in museums and galleries including Exit Art, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, in two Whitney Biennials, and at the Walker Art Center. Her short films and several of her drawings are also included in the collection at the Museum of Modern Art.

In 1965 Monk began her innovative exploration of the voice as a multifaceted instrument, composing solo pieces for unaccompanied voice and voice and keyboard. In 1978 she founded Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble to expand her musical textures and forms. Monk has recorded with the ECM New Series label since 1981, and was recently honored with a 13-disc box set of her work, Meredith Monk: The Recordings, in celebration of her 80th birthday, which includes the 2008 GRAMMY-nominated impermanence. Her newest recording, Cellular Songs, was released in October 2025. Selected scores of her work are available through Boosey & Hawkes. In addition to her numerous vocal pieces, music-theatre works and operas, Monk has created vital new repertoire for orchestra, chamber ensembles and solo instruments, with commissions from Carnegie Hall, Michael Tilson Thomas/San Francisco Symphony and New World Symphony, Kronos Quartet, Saint Louis Symphony and Los Angeles Master Chorale, among others. In 2019 a new production of her work, ATLAS: an opera in three parts (1991), was directed by Yuval Sharon and presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Her music can also be heard in films by such directors as Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard, David Byrne and the Coen Brothers.

Since graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1964, Monk has received numerous honours including the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, three “Obies” (including an award for Sustained Achievement), and two “Bessie” awards for Sustained Creative Achievement. More recently, Monk was named one of National Public Radio’s 50 Great Voices, the 2012 Composer of the Year by Musical America, and an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Republic of France. She also received the 2020 John Cage Award, 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2011 Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts, and an inaugural USA Prudential Fellow award in 2006. Monk holds honorary Doctor of Arts degrees from Bard College, Boston Conservatory, Concordia University, Cornish College of the Arts, The Juilliard School, Lafayette College, Mount Holyoke College, San Francisco Art Institute, University of the Arts and University of Hartford.

Among the many highlights of Monk’s performances from the last thirty years is her Vocal Offering for His Holiness the Dalai Lama as part of the World Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles in October 1999. Several marathon performances of her work have taken place in New York at the World Financial Center (1991), Lincoln Center Music Festival (2000), Carnegie’s Zankel Hall (2005 and 2015), Symphony Space (2008) and the Whitney Museum (2009). In February 2012 MONK MIX, a cd of remixes and interpretations featuring 25 artists from the jazz, pop, dj and new music worlds was released. She is also the subject of two books of interviews: Conversations with Meredith Monk, by arts critic and Performing Arts Journal editor Bonnie Marranca (recently released in Italian as Meredith Monk. Irridanze), and Une voix mystique, by French author Jean-Louis Tallon; and an anthology, Meredith Monk, edited by Deborah Jowitt.

In June 2023 Monk premiered her newest work, Indra’s Net, at the Holland Festival, the third part of a trilogy of her works exploring our relationship with the natural world, following the highly acclaimed On Behalf of Nature (2013) and Cellular Songs (2018). From Fall 2023 to Spring 2024, Meredith Monk. Calling, her first European retrospective exhibition, was realised as a collaboration between Oude Kerk Amsterdam with Hartwig Art Foundation and Haus der Kunst München, with a 400-page adjoining catalogue of the same name released in Fall 2024. Recently, Monk celebrated her 60th Performance Season with a host of events centered in New York City with additional performances and workshops abroad. In October 2025 she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music at the Venice Biennale and assumed the Pina Bausch Professorship at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany for the 2025/2026 winter semester.

For more information, please visit www.meredithmonk.org