Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble - On Behalf Of Nature

For five decades, vocalist-composer Meredith Monk has explored what she calls �primordial utterance,� or non-verbal vocal sound that lay beneath and beyond language, expressing �that for which we have no words.� This exploration has led her to create music that The New Yorker describes as simultaneously �visceral and ethereal, raw and rapt,� an art that �sings, dances and meditates on timeless forces.� With her latest, multivalent ECM New Series album, Monk aimed to address ecology and climate change, she says: �Believing that music speaks more directly than words, I worked to make a piece with a fluid, perceptual field that could expand awareness of what we are in danger of losing. 'On Behalf of Nature' is a meditation on our intimate connection to nature, its inner structures, the fragility of its ecology and our interdependence.� Voices and instruments have equal weight: sometimes each is heard alone; sometimes they are blended to form a new, mysterious sound; sometimes they are combined to create intricate, layered, yet transparent sonic landscapes.Personnel: Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble - Sidney Chen, Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Meredith Monk, Bruce Rameker, Allison Sniffin (voices); Bohdan Hilash (woodwinds); John Hollenbeck (percussion); Allison Sniffin (piano, keyboard, violin, French horn); Laura Sherman (harp)