Label: ECM Records

60年代から音楽、演劇、舞踏に関する総合的な作品を作り続けている米重鎮コンポーザー、パフォーマー、ヴォーカリストMeredith Monk。自然との親密なつながり、また相互依存をコンセプトに自身のボーカルアンサンブルと共に録音した[On Behalf Of Nature]。自身を含む6人のヴォーカリストは低音で呟き、時には聖歌を歌い言語を超えたコミュニケーションを行い、パーカッションを主としたアコースティック演奏はそれに同調するかの様に流麗な旋律を奏で続ける。氏の言語の探究が素晴らしい形で記録された傑作。





For five decades, vocalist-composer Meredith Monk has explored what she calls “primordial utterance,” or non-verbal vocal sound that lay beneath and beyond language, expressing “that for which we have no words.” This exploration has led her to create music that The New Yorker describes as simultaneously “visceral and ethereal, raw and rapt,” an art that “sings, dances and meditates on timeless forces.” With her latest, multivalent ECM New Series album, Monk aimed to address ecology and climate change, she says: “Believing that music speaks more directly than words, I worked to make a piece with a fluid, perceptual field that could expand awareness of what we are in danger of losing. On Behalf of Nature is a meditation on our intimate connection to nature, its inner structures, the fragility of its ecology and our interdependence.” Voices and instruments have equal weight: sometimes each is heard alone; sometimes they are blended to form a new, mysterious sound; sometimes they are combined to create intricate, layered, yet transparent sonic landscapes.