Monk’s vision endures

Meredith Monk’s major new multimedia staged work, “Impermanence,” is thus far even less permanent than she had expected.

With the video not ready, without many of the costumes and much of the lighting, the multiskilled Monk presented the music from this work about terminal illness in an only semi-staged concert at UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall on Saturday night. That was not a problem. The music is magnificent.

It has taken 40 years, but Monk has finally come into her own as a composer. To some extent, she has only herself to blame for so long a wait.

She continues to make interesting movement, and the dance world hasn’t wanted to let her go. She continues to make music that is deceptively simple, and the music world has been slow to get it. And she continues to reject advances from either discipline’s establishments.

She’s broken down a little. After years of pleading from Michael Tilson Thomas, she did finally write a piece for his New World Symphony. She also succumbed and wrote a short string quartet for the Kronos Quartet. Both works are wonderful. She now has a music publisher, and Carnegie Hall recently honored her with a marathon concert that included performances by leading new music groups and Bjork.

But if anyone else wants something from Monk, obtaining it is likely to remain like pulling teeth. The music that essentially matters to her is that which comes out from between her own teeth, and she is hanging on to those with fierce determination. The reasons weren’t hard to understand Saturday.

She had with her her longtime ensemble of five singer-dancers (including herself) and three instrumentalists. One veteran, Ching Gonzalez, has been with her since 1976.

The singing style is unique. Introducing the show, Monk told the audience that she had a revelation in the ‘60s that the voice was a musical instrument and that it should be the basis for all that she does.

It has been. But she has also, in a sense, liberated it from the body. Anything it can do -- be that scream, click or coo -- becomes her raw material. She uses simple harmonies and rhythmic figures to build intricate and wild structures. In this she is not unlike, say, architect Frank Gehry, who needs the most rigid frameworks to allow his curves to soar fancifully into space.

For Saturday’s performance, Monk began with three a cappella solos from earlier works; then she and her ensemble performed selected numbers from the second half of “Impermanence” along with selections from another recent piece, “mercy.” After intermission, she offered all the music from the first part of “Impermanence” along with its movement.

In its completed staging, “Impermanence” will apparently be a kind of celebration of life as the soul leaves the body. The first half has human aspects, the second spiritual. Humor and exuberance are everywhere. Who else could make finger snapping inspirational or a lot of “he-yo-yo-ing” unbelievably moving?

The singers are a sheer joy. They seem to be unfettered physically and vocally, yet their disciplined virtuosity is thrilling. Monk’s music is pattern-based, but the patterns never feel confining. Every time something is repeated, a new color or aspect appears.

Part of Monk’s musical growth has been an increasing sophistication with instruments. Her versatile group includes pianist Allison Sniffin, who also sings and plays violin. Bohdan Hilash has a small pile of reed instruments, so many that he sometimes needs to play two clarinets at a time. John Hollenbeck is the percussionist with a great deal to do.

Each of Monk’s singers (Theo Bleckmann, Ellen Fisher and Katie Gessinger, along with Gonzalez) is very different physically and vocally. Yet they have found such commonality that it is not always easy to tell who is singing. They move as one as well, yet remain individuals.

“Impermanence,” Monk suggests, should reach its fully staged form by the end of the year, when she plans to perform it at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and anywhere else there are presenters with the wherewithal to mount it. I hope there are enough of them that it is not too impermanent.