Meredith Monk, composer

Awards and Honors: 1995 MacArthur “Genius” Award; two Guggenheim Fellowships; a Brandeis Creative Arts Award; three “Obies” (including an award for Sustained Achievement); two Villager Awards; 2 “Bessie” Awards for Sustained Creative Achievement; the 1986 National Music Theatre Award; sixteen ASCAP Awards for Musical Composition and the 2005 ASCAP Concert Music Award; honorary Doctor of Arts degrees from Bard College, the University of the Arts, The Julliard School, and the San Francisco Art Institute; German Critics Prize for Best Records of 1981 and 1986 (for her recordings of Dolmen Music and Our Lady of Late: The Vanguard Tapes)

Recordings: Dolmen Music (ECM New Series), Our Lady of Late: The Vanguard Tapes (Wergo), mercy (ECM New Series)

Music for film: La Nouvelle Vague directed by Jean-Luc Godard and The Big Lebowski, by Joel and Ethan Coen

Formed: Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble

Music has been performed by: The Chorus of the San Francisco Symphony, Musica Sacra, The Pacific Mozart Ensemble, Double Edge, and Bang on a Can All-Stars

Performances: Vocal Offering for His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, as part of the World Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles in 1999; a three-concert retrospective entitled Voice Travel as part of the Lincoln Center Festival in 2000; Possible Sky, commissioned by Michael Tilson Thomas for the New World Symphony, premiered in April 2003 in Miami; Stringsongs, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, premiered at the Barbican Center in January 2005.

Current projects: include a new work for the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, a new music theatre piece, Impermanence, and a new piece for her Vocal Ensemble and the Kronos Quartet called Songs of Ascension in collaboration with visual artist Ann Hamilton.

Quote: "When the time comes, perhaps a hundred years from now, to tally up achievements in the performing arts during the last third of the 20th century, one name that seems sure to loom large is that of Meredith Monk. In originality, in scope, in depth, there are few to rival her." The Washington Post

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Arvo Pärt, composer

Born: September 11, 1935, in Paide, Estonia

Beginnings: music school at age 7, composing at 14. His teacher at Tallinn Conservatory said of him, "he just seemed to shake his sleeves and notes would fall out.”

Compositions: Our Garden, Stride of the World, Nekrolog, Symphonie No. 1, Symphonie No. 2, Perpetuum Mobile, Collage über BACH, Credo, Sympony No. 3, Für Alina, Fratres, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, Tabula Rasa

Music in film: Väike motoroller, Promised Land, Léos Carax's Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, Mike Nichols' Wit, the mountain climbing documentary Touching the Void, Gus van Sant's Gerry

Honors: elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters; “Contemporary Music Award” at the Classical Brit Awards ceremony at London's Royal Albert Hall in 2003

Music style: "mystic minimalism" or "sacred minimalism." He is considered a pioneer of this style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and John Tavener.

Pärt invented the musical technique he calls “tintinnabuli” (from the Latin, little bells). The basic guiding principle behind tintinnabulation is the composition of two simultaneous voices as one line — one voice moving stepwise from and to a central pitch, first up, then down, and the other sounding the notes of the triad.

Quotable: “I love his music, and I love the fact that he is such a brave, talented man. He's completely out of step with the zeitgeist and yet he's enormously popular, which is so inspiring. His music fulfills a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion.” — Steve Reich

Resides: in Berlin since 1980

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