"The" Saturday Disk - Meredith Monk - Songs of Ascension (ECM 2011)

Thanking my recent re-ordering of my CDs, I gave a listen to a disk I didn't played for many years, now...

I love, truly, sincerely, desperately love Meredith Monk's music, since in early '80s I was introduced to her music thanking my old mentor and maestro Lorenzo Zen: he played one day for me MM's "Dolmen Music"...

I truly felt I never heard such a beauty... piano, voices and sparingly used percussions by the late Collin Walcott...

I followed her on every disc she made onward and also searched the previous, older stuff...

Back in early '90, while in NYC, I also was lucky enough to attend to a loft concert... Meredith, Robert Een with Nurit Tilles on piano...

Blowed away by the experience, I was even more - if possible - deeply in love.

Book of Days was my Desert Island disk for years and still it is... this music is perfect for Pina Bausch or Carolyn Carson's modern dancing and choreographies... very kinetic and physical kind of music, indeed.

Yesterday, on the smaller system (the Cabasses', Partridge 300B, Luxman AT3000 and Studer A730) I listened to Songs of Ascension, dating 2011, on ECM, of course.

The disk is pretty different from the previous, more various in textures and instrumentarium... a strings quartet and a large chorus and a percussions array are used, while the voices are so ancient and timeless to make you wonder, after a while deeply soaked in this music, if Meredith is terrestrial or...

A short piece, titled "Mapping", is particularly hitting unplucked strings of mine: the voices are dueting in a seldom heard way... pan-potting from left to right channels, while an intermezzo of Chinese-like weird percussions, cymbals and small drums, are rock-steady centered... impressive.

Amazing music.

Atlantis-hinting, to my romantic ears;-)

Seriously: Mrs. Monk is able to make the Todd Reynolds String Quartet sounding like a spirited 3,000 B.C. or 3,000 A.C. version of Mozart or Haydn.

Painful, naked beauty!

The sonics are EXTREMELY faithful and right.

Dynamics, subtleties like the entering faders of mixer or various ambient noises, breathes and the like are very audible and transparent sound and imaging are top class.

Not new, yet being such a timeless music and disk, I strongly suggest everyone still unaware of Meredith Monk's art to take a chance and enjoy this music.

You won't regret... just tune-in your ears and soul and loose yourself in such a sonic blissful vision.