“I like to leave room for play and growth,” said Meredith Monk recently, talking about how the music she composes never really reaches a definitive, finished state – and there was plenty of play in this, her first appearance in concert in the UK in almost a decade. Monk turns 80 this year and her bird-like, mischievous magnetism seems all the more subversive given that she is at least a generation older than those who share the stage with her. Monk is sometimes bracketed with her male contemporaries on the US minimalist scene, but would any of them end a concert with a solo encore that was a vocal and physical portrait of a mosquito?
Presented as part of the Southbank’s SoundState festival, the main programme was a slightly reordered re-creation of Memory Game, the album Monk and the other three members of her Vocal Ensemble recorded in 2020 with Bang on a Can All-Stars. It presents nine numbers from throughout Monk’s career in arrangements that expand their instrumental aspects.
