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Celebrating Meredith Monk as composer, these Piano Songs give us a world at once playful and earnest. Written or derived from work composed between 1971 and 2006, the pieces inhabit Monk s unique universe, as played by two of new music s most distinguished interpreters, pianists Ursula Oppens and Bruce Brubaker. These pieces are songs because they have strong roots in Monk s pieces for voice, and because they are direct, specific, and imagistic. Meredith Monk on composing for two pianos: I delved into different relationships and possibilities between them; material passed back and forth, dialogues, interlocking phrases, shifts of figure and ground. In some pieces, I emphasized the individuality of each piano, writing for one player as the singer , the other as the accompaniment ; in other pieces I wanted the two pianos to make one large sound.