Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

mercy, a music/theater collaboration between Meredith Monk and visual artist Ann Hamilton, is this week's featured performance at the Booklyn Academy of Music's terrific Next Wave festival--now entering its final weeks. The music/performance piece is--its creators say-- a meditation on the human capacity to both extend and withhold compassion, kindness, empathy, and mercy.

Monk and Hamilton are both past recipients of the MacArthur "Genius" Award and pioneers in their respective fields. In mercy, they have joined their unique worlds to create a new and haunting universe. The New York Times described the world premiere as ". . . a multitude of visual and sonic wonders."
mercy explores the dual lines of art and science. Combining the creators' talents and their shared interests in mystery, enigma and memory, this work melds

Hamilton's rich, poetic physical environment with Monk's unique approach to movement and voice. The musical component of mercy is scored for six voices, two keyboards, percussion, violin, and theremin. The work premiered at the American Dance Festival in July 2001.

Meredith Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound. For more than 35 years, the scope and breadth of her performances, installations and site-specific works have activated architectural spaces and engaged audiences in new ways. The voice lies at the root of all her creations, which include songs, film, opera, site-specific performance, music-theater, and installations. Her pioneering exploration of the voice as an instrument expands the boundaries of musical composition. She has alternately been proclaimed as a "voice of the future" and "one of America's
coolest composers."

Ann Hamilton's work includes objects, photography, video, and performance. She is known for creating temporal environments that are rich in accumulated materials and in the residue of innumerable hand-made marks or acts. Her work is both "intimate in gesture and awesome in scale."

mercy
Composer: Meredith Monk
Performer: Meredith Monk, John Hollenbeck, Allison Easter, et al.
Ecm Records - #472468

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Our writers welcome your comments on their pieces. Send your witty bon mots to jbowles@sequenza21.com and we might even publish some of them here. And, don't forget--if you'd like to write for Sequenza21 (understanding that we have no money to pay you), send me a note. JB

Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for our Editor's Pick's of the month. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, NY, NY 10019 Also, feel free to nominate your favorite composer-- even if it's you--for Spotlight of the Week.

I Have Heard it Said That a Spirit Enters … / Music of Gavin Bryars Composer: Gavin Bryars Performers: CBC RO Orchestra, Holly Cole Gavin Bryars never failed me yet. Nearly 75 minutes of glorious melancholy from one of the two or three truly great ones, including three wonderful songs sung by Canadian jazz singer Holly Cole, a violin concerto, a gorgeous riff on the last fragment of music Wagner wrote before he died, and a long, haunting, extended adagio featuring the man himself on double bass. Better, it does not get.	Rappaccini's Daughter (Highlights) / Obsidian Butterfly Composer: Daniel Catan Performer(s): Vazquez, Mora, Suaste, Diazmunoz Naxos - #8557034 Daniel Catán, Mexico's best living composer, was born in Mexico City in 1949. A Sephardic Jew of Russian descent, he spend his first 14 years in Mexico, relocating to England to study philosophy and music. After several years at Sussex and Southampton, he moved to the United States, where he earned his Ph.D. at Princeton under the tutelage of Milton Babbitt. Catán's highly melodic style owes more to Mahler's lieder than to Babbit, however. Rappaccini's Daughter was premiered in 1994 by the San Diego Opera and established Catán as a force in "magic realist" opera.	Indian Sounds (Symphony No. 8) Composer: Gloria Coates Conductor: Jorgen Wirrmann Ensemble: Musica-viva-ensemble Dresden New World Records - #80599 Gloria Coates, one of the most original voices in modern music, is best known for her symphonies but here she draws on her experience as a singer to create a work filled with ghostly voices that hint at horrors too awful to behold. The eighth symphony for voices and orchestra draws texts from Seneca, Winnebago, and Plains Indian songs. Coates once more demonstrates that modernism and humanism are not only compatible impulses--together, they can be life-enhancing.	Light That Fills the World Composer: John Luther Adams Cold Blue Label - #10 Darkness and light are defining realities for the people, plants and animals who live in far northern climes and the abrupt and possibly deadly boundaries that separate these two extremes lie at the heart of Adams austure music. Brillant, crystalline waves of sound conjure a deceptively beautiful landscape in which light is life and darkness can quickly lead to extinction. Adams’ music is never less than spellbinding.
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