The Stage

Songs of Ascension

Published Tuesday 31 August 2010 at 16:25 by Brian G Cooper

The opening is inauspicious: an irritating swinging lamp, a figure in white gesturing oddly, strange flickering visuals, meaningless noises.

Yet this highly unusual work by composer-director Meredith Monk (in collaboration with multimedia artist Ann Hamilton), blurring the boundaries of theatre, music and visual media, soon engages and then enthrals by the sheer quality of the vocal and instrumental performances, the finely crafted spatial relationships, the performers’ constant ability to surprise and their evocation of an ever more life-enhancing mood, embracing both ecstatic and contemplative elements.

For the inspiration, as the title hints, is fundamentally religious, and a marked liturgical resonance permeates throughout. If its contemplative atmosphere springs from Monk’s Zen studies, its theme of the soul’s progress from the mundanely discordant to the harmonies of heaven springs from Judeao-Christian references: the Feast of the Ascension of Christ and the Song of Ascents of ancient Israelite pilgrims in Jerusalem.

The vocal expression of Monk’s six-member ensemble and the Edinburgh University Singers (directed by John Kitchen) is almost wholly non-verbal. Progress from animal and bird-like sounds through single vowels and snatches of Native American-like words to quasi-angelic renderings of the musical scale sometimes recalls Pentecostal speaking in tongues or shamanic trance.

The sustained quality of the string instrumentalists of the Elysian Quartet and Allison Sniffin (violin) wonderfully undergirds and responds to the ever-changing tapestry of vocal expression, while Bohdan Hilash (winds) and John Hollenbeck (percussion) complement with the curious sounds of various ethnic instruments such as the khene, a long mouth organ of Lao origin. Specially memorable is Monk’s accompaniment of her singing with the haunting music of the shruti box, an Indian accordion-type instrument.

Ann Hamilton’s black-and-white video of flickering movements glimpses the theme, but above all Meredith Monk’s innovative music and commanding direction create a rarefied, meditative work whose memorable finale touches the ethereal.