Monk in Pieces

Meredith Monk has recorded extensively for ECM Records, so is she jazz or classical? Actually, kind of neither, but her music is definitely avant-garde. According to an academic in an online conference, Monk has her own dedicated genre call number at the NYPL. She was also the doting mother of a pet turtle, Neutron. As the title suggests, directors Billy Shebar & David C. Roberts focus on illuminating episodes and important compositions, rather than chronicling her life from childhood forward in Monk in Pieces, which opens today in theaters.

Perfectly suited for the era, Monk was a pillar of the grungy Downtown arts scene in the early 1980s. That is how David Byrne discovered her. Eventually, he featured her in True Stories. She mounted the first musical production held in the Guggenheim Rotunda, which got terrible reviews from the establishment press. That was a familiar experience for her, as Shebar and Roberts prove with their brutal pull-quotes. However, the internal memos exchanged by Houston Opera staffers panicking over Monk’s approach to her commission, Atlas, are even more embarrassing.

Appropriately, Monk in Pieces spends considerable time analyzing Monk’s music, focusing more on her work as a vocalist and composer than as a pianist. Arguably, she was a leader in developing wordless vocalizations for the stage, believing them more accessible than lyrics that are tied to language and culture. Of course, jazz scat-singing long predated her, but her vocalizations define extended compositions instead of merely serving as solo-spots for vocalists.

Monk’s film work is also discussed, but not in such detail. We learn Monk had to cast a new turtle for her short Turtle Dreams, because Neutron was just too handsome for the part. Disappointingly, ECM and producer Manfred Eicher are never mentioned by name, even though Monk’s records on the label are often pictured.

Happily, we hear a lot of Monk’s music throughout the film, but probably no piece makes a deeper impression than “Gotham Lullaby,” which Monk originally recorded for ECM with jazz percussionist Colin Walcott. Famously, Bjork covered Monk’s song as a post-9/11 tribute to New York City and appears in the film to discuss the composer as a source of inspiration.

Overall, Shebar and Roberts do a nice job framing the music and providing insightful context. They also nicely convey a sense of Monk’s cultural milieu, without getting bogged down in ideology or politics. Wisely, there is almost nothing in the doc that might alienate viewers, regardless of their place on the ideological spectrum. Recommended for those who might appreciate Monk’s adventurous music, Monk in Pieces opens today (7/25) in New York, at the IFC Center.