''Turtle Dreams'' is an album by American composer and vocalist

Meredith Monk Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recor ...

recorded in 1983 and released on the

ECM New Series ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) is an independent record label founded by Karl Egger, Manfred Eicher and Manfred Scheffner in Munich in 1969. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a variety of recordings, and ECM's a ...

label.ECM discography
accessed September 20, 2011 A choreographed version of the work premiered at the Plexus Club in

Chelsea, Manhattan Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The area's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, the Hudson River and West Street to the west, and Sixth Avenue to the east, with its nort ...

. A film version, directed by

Ping Chong Ping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Ping, a domesticated Chinese duck in the illustrated book '' The Story about Ping'', first published in 1933 * Ping, a minor character in ''Seinfeld'', an NBC sitcom * Ping, a c ...

, was broadcast the same year on September 2, 1983, on WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts.

Inspiration

In the late 1970s Monk acquired a turtle named Neutron as a pet, and in 2016 said "When I first got her I had a lot of dreams about her, very strange dreams. And then I started thinking, how does a turtle think? What would a turtle mind be, and if she's sleeping, what would a turtle dream be?" In a 2010 interview, Monk said she found standard music concerts boring, and said "at that time I started to try to feed in elements to that situation – like one little element of movement. Turtle Dreams is a music piece that has a very simplified movement component. I was working on that music myself, and then I thought 'wouldn't it be interesting if the movement had a totally simple counterpoint? So instead of standing there singing, what about if we went from side to side?' And from there, the piece seemed to make itself." She also added "When I was working on it I didn't realise some things that I see now. There's a certain fascist element to it, and I wasn't conscious of that at the time. ... There's a flatness, a surface style to the people, and maybe a kind of narcissism too." The film version of the piece includes footage of turtles, initially in natural settings and then walking across a world map and through a miniature model of a Western city. This footage was photographed and directed by filmmaker

Robert Withers Robert Enoch Withers (September 18, 1821September 21, 1907) was an American physician, military officer, newspaperman, politician diplomat, and Freemason. He served as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia and represented Virginia in the United State ...

Reception

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...

awarded the album four stars, with Ted Mills calling it "A daring display of vocal gymnastics and a journey back to childhood when all sounds were wondrous".Mills, T
Allmusic Review
accessed September 20, 2011 After its premier John Rockwell of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote "The effect is rich, enigmatic and compelling." Writing in 2010, Isla Leaver-Yap suggested ''Turtle Dreams'' is "one of Monk's most aggressive and direct works" and comments "The proximity of players to audience, and the blank stare that they deliver, push ''Turtle Dreams'' into a place of intimate hostility, where the emotional charge does not derive from the content but from the format and tone in the work." In a survey of Monk's work for the newsletter "Tusk Is Better Than Rumors", the author assesses the different tracks on the album and concludes "'Turtle Dreams (waltz)' is the only one that really grabs my attention—'View 1' and 'View 2' are both very pretty and 'Engine Steps' and 'Ester's Song' are neat little curios, but 'Turtle Dreams' itself is an all-timer." At Between Sound and Space, Tyran Grillo wrote "As with much of Monk's compositional work, what we get on this CD is only half the journey, complimented as it is by dance and imagery. The brief clips available online don't seem to do justice to the overall shape and feel of what I am sure is a far more inclusive live experience." In 2020, interest in the performance piece was reignited after coverage by YouTube movie-review channel

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, who featured a copy of the WGBH filmed version on their show "Best of the Worst".

Track listing

:''All compositions by Meredith Monk'' # "Turtle Dreams (Waltz)" - 17:52 # "View 1" - 10:13 # "Engine Steps" - 2:03 # "Ester's Song" - 1:14 # "View 2" - 6:02 :*Recorded in New York City (tracks 1 & 2), at Hanford Mills Museum, East Meredith in New York (track 3), and at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg, West Germany (track 4 & 5)

Personnel

–

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production ...

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis ...

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

Collin Walcott Collin Walcott (April 24, 1945 – November 8, 1984) was an American musician who worked in jazz and world music. Early life Walcott was born in New York City, United States. He studied violin and tympani in his youth, and was a percussion stud ...

–

didgeridoo The didgeridoo (; also spelt didjeridu, among other variants) is a wind instrument, played with vibrating lips to produce a continuous drone while using a special breathing technique called circular breathing. The didgeridoo was developed by ...

(tracks 2–5), organ (track 1) *

Julius Eastman Julius Eastman (October 27, 1940 – May 28, 1990) was an American composer, pianist, vocalist, and performance artist whose work is associated with musical minimalism. He was among the first composers to combine minimalist processes with elements ...

– organ (track 1) *

Steve Lockwood ''yes'Steve is a masculine given name, usually a short form (hypocorism) of Steven or Stephen Notable people with the name include: steve jops * Steve Abbott (disambiguation), several people * Steve Adams (disambiguation), several people * Steve A ...

– organ (track 1) *

Andrea Goodman Andrea is a given name which is common worldwide for both males and females, cognate to Andreas, Andrej and Andrew. Origin of the name The name derives from the Greek word ἀνήρ (''anēr''), genitive ἀνδρός (''andrós''), that re ...

– voice (track 1) *

Paul Langland Paul Langland (born February 6, 1951) is an American dancer, singer, choreographer and Arts Professor at New York University. Career Langland's professional career began in 1972. In his work as a dancer and choreographer he has spanned many di ...

– voice (track 1) *

Robert Een Robert Een (born 1952) is an American composer, cellist, and vocalist. Career Known for his use of extended technique, extended vocal and cello techniques, Een has recorded eight albums of his compositions and scored several films. He received Bes ...

– voice (track 1)

References

{{Authority control 1983 albums Albums produced by Manfred Eicher ECM New Series albums Meredith Monk albums