Alex Ross on Meredith Monk

"The Times once dispatched a committee of music, dance, and theatre writers to assess her. … Perhaps I'm biased, but music seems to have become Monk's true home. Since the late seventies, when she convened her own ensemble to perform 'Dolmen Music,' a hugely influential study in extended vocal techniques, she has increasingly positioned herself as a composer, relying on music to create contrapuntal effects that she formerly drew from the equal interaction of sound, image, and movement. Back in 1991, the Houston Grand Opera presented her opera 'Atlas,' and in 2003 the New World Symphony, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, introduced her first orchestral work, 'Possible Sky,' a freewheeling sonic fantasy. Her two most recent recordings for the German label ECM, 'Mercy' and 'Impermanence,' have instruments dancing actively alongside voices. Perhaps most important, Monk no longer needs to be present for the execution of her music: the singers of M6, a group based in New York, have devoted themselves to learning and reinterpreting the Monk repertory" ("Primal Song," New Yorker, 11/9/09, p. 84).