MUSIC
MONDAY & TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15 & 16, 2018
8:00 PM

(Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan

$25-$35
https://lpr.com/lpr_events/meredith-monk-night-2-october-15th-2018/
https://lpr.com/lpr_events/meredith-monk-night-3-october-16th-2018/

Meredith Monk had been doing pieces of Cellular Songs, as a work in progress, for a few years; it seemed like a bunch of pleasant miniatures.  So Monk fans were blown away when she premiered Cellular Songs in the whole at BAM last Spring, and it turned out to be a major work indeed:  her best composition in at least a decade.  To be sure, those BAM performances were fully staged, with choreography and a stage set that added greatly to the total impact.  I'm not going to claim that nothing will be lost in these unstaged concert performances.  But they will permit you to focus more closely on the music, as sung by Monk and her wonderful singers -- and the music is extraordinary, in Monk's unique serene folk/world-inflected contemporary classical manner.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Celebrate the return of this extraordinary piece at Existing Conditions:  New York's best new cocktail bar, with worthwhile food to boot.