Meredith Monk, the voice as a spark of a sonic revolution

"In 1974, Meredith Monk, 82, moved into a fifth-floor apartment in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood. Back then, this beautiful loft you see was nothing more than a dusty, broken-down warehouse full of rats, says the American singer, post-minimalist composer, and performer, as she turns her computer screen to show a large, uncluttered living room that still preserves the original floorboards (indestructible wood, she says proudly) from the old textile factories of lower Manhattan."

"When I moved in, there was just a toilet and a sink that was all we artists who were just starting out could afford. At Teddy's on the corner a mafia restaurant Philip Glass, Trisha Brown, and Laurie Anderson used to go for meals. Then everything got expensive and chic she protests, still smiling. Luckily, I have rent stabilization, otherwise I could not stay here."

"The year after moving there, Monk received an invitation from Luca Ronconi, then director of the Venice Music Biennale, to present Education of the Girlchild at the Italian festival an opera-ritual about the memory of the female body. Until that moment, I hadn't really considered that my work could have an audience outside my own country, she admits. So I took it very seriously."

Meredith Monk moved into a fifth-floor Tribeca loft in 1974 when the space was a dusty, broken-down warehouse. The loft preserves original textile-factory floorboards and Monk credits rent stabilization for allowing her to remain. Early neighborhood life included inexpensive meals at Teddy's with contemporaries such as Philip Glass, Trisha Brown, and Laurie Anderson before the area gentrified. The year after moving, Monk accepted an invitation from Luca Ronconi to present Education of the Girlchild at the Venice Music Biennale, an opera-ritual about the female body's memory. She scouted venues for acoustic and physical demands and later returned to Venice with further works, earning major recognition.

Read at english.elpais.com