Meredith Monk can chart every bead of inspiration on her new necklace of voice, music, and theater. She points to poet Norman Fischer’s translations of the Psalms, which Monk stitched to her own fascination with the human impulse to “ascend.” She tells of reconnecting with visual artist Ann Hamilton, a past collaborator, after hearing she was creating a tower. What Monk can’t do is say how Songs of…

Marc Bamuthi Joseph upends the phrase “think globally, act locally,” striving to inject core community values into his work as an international hip-hop artist. “I’m not a stereotypical emblem for what hip-hop culture is or how it gets broadcast around the planet,” he says. “Hip-hop is definitely in my body, but I also don’t have a gold grill in my mouth, don’t have rims on my car, I pay my taxes, I have a…