Meredith Monk Day
Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records. In 1991, Monk composed an opera called Atlas, commissioned and produced by the Houston Opera and the American Music Theater Festival.
Her music has been used in films by the Coen Brothers (The Big Lebowski, 1998) and Jean-Luc Godard (Nouvelle Vague, 1990 and Notre musique, 2004). Trip hop musician DJ Shadow sampled Monk’s “Dolmen Music” on the song “Midnight in a Perfect World.”
Meredith Monk was born to businessman Theodore Glenn Monk (1909–1998) and singer Audrey Lois Monk (née Audrey Lois Zellman; 1911–2009), in Manhattan, New York. Her mother, a professional singer of popular and classical music known under the stage name of Audrey Marsh, was herself the daughter of professional musicians: the Russian Jewish bass-baritone Joseph B. Zellman, and Rose (Kornicker) Zellman, a concert pianist of German Jewish background from Philadelphia. Meredith has a sister, Tracy (born 1948).