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。1971年の[Tower]から2006年の[totentanz]までの長い期間を跨ぐピアノ曲のみで編集した[Piano Songs]。ボーカル作品では時折過激な表現が確認出来ますが、本作ではミニマル且つ素朴な旋律で統一。2台のピアノの為に書かれた楽曲では1人の奏者を"歌手"、もう1人を"伴奏"として捉え、あくまで"歌"という表現で仕上げています。





Celebrating Meredith Monk as composer, these Piano Songs give us a world at once playful and earnest. Written or derived from work composed between 1971 and 2006, the pieces inhabit Monk’s unique universe, as played by two of new music’s most distinguished interpreters, pianists Ursula Oppens and Bruce Brubaker. These pieces are ‘songs’ because they have strong roots in Monk’s pieces for voice, and because they are direct, specific, and imagistic. Meredith Monk on composing for two pianos: “I delved into different relationships and possibilities between them; material passed back and forth, dialogues, interlocking phrases, shifts of figure and ground. In some pieces, I emphasized the individuality of each piano, writing for one player as the ‘singer’, the other as the ‘accompaniment’; in other pieces I wanted the two pianos to make one large sound.”