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Online
December 2, 2020 @ 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm EST
Making New Music During This Time
Please join us on Wednesday, December 2, 2020 at 6:30pm ET for an online conversation with Meredith Monk and Alan Pierson about Monk’s recent work with Alarm Will Sound, Anthem. First shared online in August 2020 as the inaugural release of AWS’s Video Chat Variations series, Anthem was made remotely, in real time through the internet. The result is a work that demonstrates that music still connects us despite unprecedented circumstances, and that we can create beauty in the midst of our current global challenges.
Pierson and Monk will discuss the development, rehearsal, and recording process for Anthem and share the completed work, followed by a Q&A.
Register HERE to receive the Zoom link.
Anthem (2020)
Performed by Alarm Will Sound and Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble
Anthem is one section of an evening-length work-in-progress inspired by the Buddhist concepts of interdependence and cause and effect as applied to our relationship with nature. A prayer for the continuation of our planet and for our commonality as its citizens, Anthem is an affirmation of nature’s power, particularly in this time of crisis and upheaval.
When Alan Pierson asked about working on a project that addresses the question, “how can we find ways of playing live together when we can’t be in the same actual space?,” I realized that Anthem might be a good possibility to work with since it already had delays and simultaneous time variations built into the composition. We both felt that it could accommodate the irregularities of virtual technology.
Anthem plays with various aspects of time, beginning with a simple linear progression that gradually accumulates layers of rhythm and timbre. It ends with a complex, multi-layered passage in which each performer plays/sings in his or her own time trajectory, together creating a larger sound cycle that slowly extends and then dissolves into space.
– Meredith Monk