Stretch Your Ears: Meredith Monk

If you can hear echoes of Kate Bush, Diamanda Galas, Laurie Anderson or Björk in the work of Meredith Monk, it's not surprising: Monk got there first. The American composer, choreographer and singer is a pioneer of what have become known as extended vocal techniques, using her voice as an instrument to communicate complex ideas and emotions without the benefit of conventional lyrics or text. While a voice-as-instrument approach has been common to jazz since Louis Armstrong first sang on record, Monk is no scat singer; nor is she a frighteningly accomplished modernist-mimic in the manner of Cathy Berberian.

Rather, Monk – who has just turned 60 years of age – obtains her extraordinary effects by a kind of vocal stealth, creating a private language (both for herself and the vocal ensemble with whom she works) of cries and whispers, drones, chants and ululations to accompany the minimalist pulses of her music. She doesn't have a big voice – perhaps doesn't have much of a voice at all by most standards – but it certainly has depth. Like her voice, Monk's distinctive sound-world draws you into a relatively quiet, interior, space; much closer to a whisper than a scream.

Meredith Monk's latest album, mercy, is her eighth for the ECM label, for whom she first recorded in 1981, and it documents the music for a multimedia theatre-piece (co-created with the installation artist Ann Hamilton – pictured above, right, with Monk) which has its final performance at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival this Saturday. Originally inspired by the news image of a Palestinian father and son caught in crossfire on the Gaza Strip, mercy developed into a meditation on the idea of mercy in history, a humanistic theme that some American critics have tried to yoke to the emotional aftermath of September 11.

Musically, mercy more than stands up for itself, offering, as well as many elements familiar from previous Monk works, a number of new departures for the composer, who has credited three of the 14 segments to collaborators in her ensemble. Among the pluses are a beguiling Eastern quality to much of the music; the woody sound of Bohdan Hilash's clarinets; and the welcome associations with Steve Reich's mid-period minimalism evoked by both the vocal ensemble and John Hollenbeck's percussion, melodica and piano. As Björk has evidently included Monk's "Gotham Lullaby" in her current set, she is unlikely to remain obscure for much longer.