Cutting Edge

You might recognize her Dolmen Music or pieces used in The Big Lebowski or her iconic Medusa meets Bob Marley braids; if you haven't heard her work before, trust us, you'll flip your wig. Legendary avant-garde singer/pianist/choreographer/composer/filmmaker Meredith Monk has for 40 years been a consistently rewarding, inspiring one-woman ensemble, offering up some unique compositions as Our Lady of Late for solo voice, wine glass and percussion. But if you don't like John Cage, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Cecil Taylor, Talking Heads, Yoko Ono, William Burroughs and Laurie Anderson, then, no, you won't appreciate Monk, whose performances use human voice and objects and postmodern snippets. In a famous piano composition, she drolly confers, "I still have my allergies, ha ha hee hee. I still have my philosophy." Giddy, empathetic, powerful and joyous, her work celebrates the human spirit, possibility and sonic exuberance-assuming you go in for that sort of thing.
Thu., April 3, 7 p.m., 2008