Meredith Monk – MEMORY GAME

CA21153
release date: 3.27.20 (digital & CD)

Music by Meredith Monk
Performed by
Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble
with the Bang on a Can All-Stars
Produced by David Cossin & Rob Friedman

featuring:
Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble:
Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger, Meredith Monk, Allison Sniffin

guest artist: Michael Cerveris

Bang on a Can All-Stars: Ashley Bathgate, Robert Black, Vicky Chow, David Cossin, Mark Stewart, Ken Thomson

MEMORY GAME is both a look back at a pivotal point in Meredith Monk’s storied career, and a richly layered portrait of how vocal music, under the guidance of an indefatigable master, can play with our expectations in poignant and compelling ways. What emerges is a suite of songs that flows with a remarkable narrative cohesion, stemming in large part from the composer’s willingness to revisit the past with an insatiably curious eye.

“The first time that I ever worked with Bang on a Can, it was in the late ‘90s,” Monk tells DownBeat magazine in a recent interview. “That was really, in a way, the beginning of this project. It’s exciting to hear these songs again in a new way, with more of an instrumental aspect added onto the vocal.”

Teaming up here with her renowned Vocal Ensemble (featuring Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin) and the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Monk explores all-new arrangements of never-before-recorded selections from her award-winning sci-fi opera The Games, as well as new versions of several pieces originally released on Do You Be (1987) and impermanence (2008). The album includes arrangements by Monk, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Bang on a Can All-Stars member Ken Thomson, and Vocal Ensemble member Allison Sniffin.

For composer Michael Gordon, whose arrangement of “Spaceship” opens the album, his own memories of Monk’s music go back to his earliest days in New York City. “I saw Meredith perform when I came to New York in the 1970s,” he says. “Her first appearance on the Bang on a Can Marathon was in 1989, and we’ve had a close association ever since. In 1999, we arranged some of her music for her to sing with the Bang on a Can All-Stars. It was magic, and sparks flew! MEMORY GAME is a collection of pieces we’ve performed together in New York and on tour, with some new arrangements that we’ve yet to play live.”

As Monk writes in her liner notes for the recording: “Right from the beginning of conceiving MEMORY GAME, the prospect of uniting the magnificent singers and players from Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble and Bang on a Can All-Stars filled me with excitement. My hope is that our rich and joyous experience of making music together inspires and resonates with the listener.”