“If Monk is seeking a place in the classical firmament, classical music has much to learn from her…She may loom even larger as the new century unfolds, and later generations will envy those who got to see her live.”

–Alex Ross, The New Yorker

“At once meditative, then playful, then meditative again, WEAVE is a feast for the soul, the ears and the eyes.”

–Bill Townsend, St. Louis Classical Music Examiner

“WEAVE makes more imaginative use of the orchestra than Monk’s earlier works, integrating the instruments – a small orchestra dominated by a battery of marimbas and two pianos - seamlessly into the whole.”

–Sarah Bryan Miller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Ascension Variations is a magical adventure woven from grand and pedestrian touches, and in the end the space itself is the star—or Ms. Monk’s transformation of it. For an hour, we’ve lived in a spiral, where up is down and down is up. It’s a sacred place.”

–Gia Koulas, The New York Times

“Tapping into the wellspring of human emotions, Monk has produced an experience that is profoundly, inexplicably satisfying. Ascension Variations brings so many opposites together that the experience seems to be everything at once -- intimate and communal, spiritual and prosaic, innocent and wise.”

–Robert Johnson, New Jersey Star Ledger

[see video of Songs of Ascension]

“Monk’s music retains its seductive buoyancy…and her writing for string quartet exults in a newly idiomatic command of the medium.”

–Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

“These beatific voices and strings, plus percussion and winds, weave an iridescent tapestry of captivating sounds- otherworldly and yet oddly familiar- while wending about the stage like participants in some ancient ritual.”

-Brett Campbell, Stanford Lively Arts Magazine

“…a major Monk work. The music [is] glorious. Monk’s most significant growth over the past decade or two has been as a composer…she is a great master of utterance…a listener feels somehow in communication with another, perhaps wiser, species.”

-Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

“Watching Monk’s work is like seeing music. Her movement style is a visualization of the dips and curves that echo the spiraling sound of her choir. Not like a chorus you are used to seeing stand on stage, but a moving, breathing, ‘dancing’ organism that embodies the sounds it creates.”

-Kelly Hargraves, eyespyLA.com

[see photos and videos of impermanence ]

“impermanence is a meditation on death and the passage of time, done with Monk’s inimitable brand of voluptuous spareness. With its fluid blend of choral music, song, film and dance, it marks the latest unclassifiable effort by this visionary creator.”

-- Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

“…a lovely, rueful full-evening disquisition on death and the dying. That’s not to say that impermanence is either depressing or maudlin. The work…exalts life.”

-- Allan Ulrich, Voice of Dance

“Voices and movements approach loss and remembrance profoundly, making poetry of the mundane and seasoning it with wit.”

-- Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice

[see photos and videos of mercy]

"...what this intenselry moving, drop-dead gorgeous can't-be-categorized fluid piece of meditative mucic, movements and mileu presents is an immersion into the process of transcendance."

-- Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, Calendar Section , Feb 16, 2002

"What the piece's creators appeared to be thinking about was the mystery, beauty and sadess of life... Together , they created a multitude of visual and sonic wonders... spellbinding... watching this work was like seeing fleeting thoughts made briefly visible.

-- Jack Anderson, The New York Times

"Each character, each scene each musical selection moves forward with an unrelenting yet natural meter that weaves one segment seamlessly to the next, conctructing a fabric so right in its final wholeness that not a thread is out of place. Each section ebbs and flows as inexorable as the tide, leading to as dramatic and inevitable a conclusion as one would expect at the culmination of one of the monumental Bach fugues for organ."

-- Babara Zuck, The Columbus Dispatch, October 31, 2001

"A composer, singer and theater artist for whom experimentation has led to wondrous discovery, Monk conjures up a specturm of colorful and evocative sounds from her one-of-a-kind vocal instrument."

"...a muscian of boundless imagination and vision. Both alone and with her vocal ensemble, she took the audience into enchanting, composttionate and disturbing worlds ...the shadings, effects and expressive elements captured the listener's attention and never let go."

-- Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer, October 8, 2001

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