RECORDINGS

By leaping between various media, composer-vocalist-choreographer-filmmaker Monk has, in one sense, confounded expectations. In another way, though, Monk’s vision has remained true: Whatever the tools and senses involved, she is a minimalist, using a simple language to probe essential truths. Monk is still searching for that place where the modern impulse meets the primitive one, a paradox in full force on this recording, which neatly documents Monk’s ongoing vocal lab work. Apart from occasional piano parts (Nurit Tilles plays the Satie-ish solo “St. Petersburg Waltz”), the voice--in myriad Monk textures--is the focus, as on the two sets of title pieces, in solo and duet settings. Lighter in feeling, “Three Heavens and Hells,” for three interlacing voices, comes off as a semi-satirical, nonsectarian liturgical chant. Monk knows better than most that the voice has many potential routes of expression.