Meredith Monk Wins Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at Venice Biennale Musica
147May 20, 2025
Pathbreaking composer, choreographer, and performer Meredith Monk has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the organizers of the Sixty-Ninth Venice Biennale Musica. An influential figure in the New York experimental scene of the 1960s, Monk is renowned for her extended vocal technique and for boundary-breaking works combining music, theater, dance, and cinema. She will be presented with the honor during a ceremony taking place at the Biennale, which showcases contemporary music and this year will run October 11–25. As well, the Biennale will host a special performance by Monk at the Teatro Malibran, with a program of works spanning her entire career sung by Monk and members of her vocal ensemble.
“Meredith Monk has revolutionized music and the performing arts with an approach that has expanded the potential of the human voice, transforming it into a vehicle for unprecedented sonic exploration,” said the organizers of the Biennale in a statement. “Her wordless incantations and ability to build entire sonic worlds from the simplest gestures give rise to a dialogue between matter and spirit, between presence and transcendence. Her work cannot be confined within historical categories, but opens up a living universe of sound, in constant evolution, which appears both ancient and radically innovative at the same time.”
Born in 1942 in New York, Monk attended Sarah Lawrence College before moving back to the city and founding The House, a company devoted to interdisciplinary performance, establishing the Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble a decade later. Among her most significant works are Vessel: an opera epic, 1971, for an ensemble of seventy-five voices, electronic organ, dulcimer, and accordion, which cemented her reputation as a pioneer of site-specific art; Dolmen Music, 1981, a landmark work of vocal music; and ATLAS, 1991, a three-part opera commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera. Her cycle Songs of Ascension, 2008, conceived for an eight-story tower designed by visual artist Ann Hamilton, brings together a string quartet, wind instruments, percussion, and a chorus in a composition that explores elevation in music.