“Billy Shebar’s vital documentary makes sense of an artist who’s always defied basic understanding… a strangely perfect window into the singular genius of Meredith Monk” – David Ehrlich, Indie Wire
Meredith Monk—composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist—is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural in?uence is largely unrecognized. With Monk’s music at its core, and featuring interviews with Björk and David Byrne, Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of Monk’s own work and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery. As a female artist in the male-dominated downtown arts scene of the 1960-70s, Monk had to fight for recognition and resources. Early reviews in The New York Times were vicious and sexist: “A disgrace to the name of dancing,” wrote one critic, and “so earnestly strange in a talented little-girl way,” wrote another. Yet as her celebrated contemporary, Philip Glass, says, “she, among all of us, was – and still is – the uniquely gifted one.” In the film’s final chapters, we see her warily entrust her masterpiece, ATLAS, to director Yuval Sharon and singer Joanna Lynn-Jacobs for a new production at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For 60 years, Monk has directed and performed in all of her works; now she must learn to let go. What will happen to such singular work after she is gone?
