Tag Archives: Maya Beiser

Salt, the Residue of Looking Back. Maya Beiser Casts Her Unique Gaze


Denise Burt’s beautiful design effectively encompasses the scope and meaning of this album in arresting images

Maya Beiser, cellist, Bang on a Can member, listener, composer, innovator, interpreter, and producer. Beiser’s hats are many and each new album traces the musings of a truly interesting artist, ever evolving, revisioning, thinking, growing. She cuts a singular, intelligent, and deeply felt path that is both monolithic and definitive.

Looking back and forward

This latest release on her own Islandia label is another exposition of a powerful musical mind bringing fascinating perspectives, the artist’s singular take on music spanning some 500 years. Beiser is not about “authentic” interpretation (mostly) but rather about lucidly sharing her perspective, her musical visions.

Previous releases gave us her take on living musical icons like Philip Glass and Terry Riley. She also dares to look back upon some of the “sacred cows” of the repertoire like the Bach Cello Suites and Riley’s seminal “In C” among others. Her revisionings are respectful homages and insightful performances that challenge and inform her listeners to maybe hear in a new way. As T.S. Eliot said,

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place (or the piece) for the first time”

So it is with the carefully curated selections on this disc. Beginning with a Missy Mazzoli composition featuring vocalist and performance artist Helga Davis (featured most visibly in the most recent iteration of Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach”). Her vocal skills drive these settings of texts by Erin Cressida Wilson. And this piece sets the tone for this album which is both lament and celebration for the experiences of women in history, mythology, and memory.

The first five tracks contain the bittersweet song cycle, Salt, from which the album takes its name. Here the listener is brought into the context of the Biblical story of Lot’s wife, forever imprisoned in a pillar of salt. But, rather than a pedestrian retelling of the tale, this cycle appropriates the context of the story to establish, with painful directness, the tone and direction of what will follow.

Helga Davis (photo from WNYC)

From her mineral prison, a mineral ironically known for its preserving properties, she sings of her crime of looking and remembering. She sings of pain, anger, and sadness, but never with remorse for her “crime”. It is an image that Beiser says lives powerfully in her personal memory. Mazzoli, Davis, and Beiser recontextualize the prisoner as victim, not criminal.

The ghostly images of the women we meet on this album are lamented as well as celebrated for their stories which burn deeply into our collective mythology, into our personal memories. Beiser lovingly dedicates this release first to her daughter, Aurielle Kaminsky, then to the principals whose creativity and energy pervade this album: Missy Mazzoli, Clarice Jensen, Meredith Monk, Erin Cressida Wilson, Helga Davis, Odeya Nani, Beth Morrison, and Christina Jensen.

In Lament to Phaedra, a work by the late British composer John Tavener is heard in an arrangement by Beiser. The 1995 work is sung by Phaedra’s sister Ariadne in response to Phaedra’s suicide by hanging. But here we have a wordless arrangement for cello and electronics that focuses on Tavener’s unique harmonic style and lyrical melodic construction. The result is effectively an affirmation of the lament for her fate.

Then we are treated to yet another transcription of a curiously difficult but very effective use of the early music concept of “hocket”, an interactive counterpoint of two voices. The eponymous Hocket, though vocal in its original form is, like much of Meredith Monk’s work, without a text. Monk’s work is about the voice, or the voices. And her revisioned operatic creations are fed by the mythological streams of women’s stories. This creative arrangement by this artist is an homage to Monk and, by extension, to the women she so beautifully celebrates in her work.

Meredith Monk with Allison Sniffin after a performance of Hocket at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco (copyright Allan J. Cronin)

Another arrangement follows. It is a Melody from Orfeo ed Euridice, from the late baroque opera by Christopher Willibald Gluck. It is, of course, another ill fated relationship ended by the same infraction of looking and remembering that sealed the fate of Lot’s wife. Here Beiser chooses the gorgeous “Dance of the Blessed Spirits”, another wordless homage that imprints on the listener most effectively.

Next up is yet another wordless work, this one by fellow cellist and composer, Clarice Jensen, whose work has graced these blog pages before in reviews of her singular, drone, minimalist, meditative albums. Whether you call her work “drone” or “minimalism” or whatever you choose, your ears will bask in her meditative sonic ministrations. Jensen’s work, while related by its medium (that of cello and electronics), is a distinctly different style, immersive, meditative, evocative, a sound bath for the listener.

Clarice Jensen (from Jensen Artists page)

From the 21st century we are now transported to 17th century Venice and the work of the early baroque master Claudio Monteverdi. In the only surviving music from his second opera, we hear Ariadne, sister of Phaedra, singing the lament for the sister who had taken her life in shame and sadness.

The penultimate track brings us to this artist’s cultural roots with a song by Yedidya Admon to lyrics by Yitzchak Shenhar.

My Field (Shedemati)

My field,
At dawn I sowed it in tears,
Let the prayer of the farmer be heard!
My field,
It is saturated with dew,
It is intoxicated by the light of the sun.
The grain bends low in front of the reaper.
The strides are long,
The burnished scythe is raised high.

Odeya Nini provides the voice in this “reimagining“ of this classic song of sadness and lament by the lowly farmer imagined by the poet.

Odeya Nini (unknown copyright)

Fittingly, this last track is about death, endings. It is Beiser’s arrangement of Henry Purcell’s “When I am laid in the earth” from his opera, Dido and Aeneas. The text:

When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

But forgetting is not allowed here. Beiser begs us to remember. And we cannot avert our ears or eyes.

Solo Percussion Manifesto Volume I: Steven Schick’s “A Hard Rain”


Islandia IMR 011

Steven Schick is a multi-talented and skilled musician. A quick look at his website demonstrates the sheer scope of his musical career. He is probably best known as a master percussionist having played with the San Diego Symphony and a host of others internationally. He is also a fine conductor and composer. His website is a must visit to grasp the scope of this man’s work.

Steven Schick (photo from composer’s website)

Now, solo percussionists are somewhat of a rarity even in the 21st century. Percussion is ostensibly the “junk drawer” of the orchestra by which I mean it becomes the home to pretty much anything that doesn’t fit into the categories of keyboards, strings, woodwinds, and brass instruments. Anyone who has studied any theoretical taxonomy knows that you have to have a “junk drawer” (so to speak) to place things that don’t fit elsewhere at least until you can find a useful category in which to place them. The point here is that a solo percussionist has a huge amount of instruments from which to choose and subsequently master (some of which might also fit other categories like piano, harp, etc. but also things like taxi horns, for example, which Gershwin used in his tone poem, “An American in Paris”). Add to that the artists who regularly add instruments to this group and the task of mastering these becomes even more daunting.

Percussion, aside from tympani and the occasional military drum is largely absent from western music. That began to change with the work of Henry Cowell, John Cage, and Lou Harrison in the early 20th century. As interest grew, so did repertoire.

Despite attending many contemporary music concerts I cannot recall any by a single percussionist. Percussion ensembles began to appear in the early 20th century including Paul Price (1921-1986), Donald Knaack, and Les Percussions de Strasbourg. After 1962 or so the number of percussion ensembles increased along with a rapidly growing repertoire.

With this release Steven Schick begins what appears to be the first of a multi-volume survey of works for solo percussion under the collective title of “Weather Systems”. This first volume is subtitled, “A Hard Rain”, a two disc set that is both manifesto and innovation. It is released by Bang on a Can cellist Maya Beiser’s Islandia Records, not to be confused with the pop music Island Records.

Schick’s book on percussion published in 2006 is a sort of precursor to this CD release.

Here, Schick appears to be doing two related things. First, he is establishing a repertoire for the solo percussionist. And, second, he is presenting his own insights and ideas to both define and expand that repertoire. Having already released definitive recordings of percussion music by Xenakis and Stockhausen, among others, he is apparently ready to blaze a trail that will increase the possibility of hearing a solo percussion concert and establishing a canon of music for those concerts.

There are 7 works (3 by German composers, 4 by American composers) on these two discs largely focused on mid 20th century works and presented (mostly) in chronological order:

1. John Cage (1912-1992) 27’10.554” for a percussionist (1956) arguably one of the must difficult of the pieces here. It is more like a set of tasks than a conventional score and may be the first great solo percussion piece.

2. Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) Zyklus (1959) experimenting differently from Cage but producing a similarly difficult and masterful work.

3. Morton Feldman (1926-1987) “The King of Denmark” (1964) the second name in the self defined “New York School” of composers, this is about soft sounds and, like the Cage work, unconventionally scored.

4. Charles Wourinen (1938-2020) “Jannissary Music” (1966) a lifelong devotee of post Schoebergian 12 tone music manages to be relevant. And this one of his earliest masterpieces.

5. Helmet Lachenmann (1935- ) “Intérieur I” (1966), this is among the earliest acknowledged works by this prolific German composer.

6. William Hibbard (1939-1989) “Parson’s Piece” (1968), an early work by an artist who died in mid career.

7. Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) “Ursonate” (1922-1932). This realization of Schwitters’ spoken vocal score is a modern revisioning of this unusual dada-like work. Many recorded versions exist (including one by Schwitters) demonstrating a surprising diversity of interpretation, sometimes with visual components. This is actually pretty frequently performed but this is the first version explicitly designed with a percussionist in mind. It is here that Schick is at his most transgressional and creative. In addition to his percussion Schick includes his voice in the mix and teams with Sharokh Shadegari on electronics and voice. This is the only non-solo work on this set and it is a radically effective take on Schwitters’ strange opus.

All are engaging and all will thrill percussionists who work in new music as well as new music enthusiasts. It remains to be seen if solo percussion performances begin to proliferate but, after all, this is only volume one.

Bang on a Glass Can: Maya Beiser’s New Album


This is not a Philip Glass album. This is also not a tortured Magritte metaphor. It is a Maya Beiser album. Yes, she is playing her transcriptions of several of Philip Glass’ pieces: (Piano) Etude No. 5, Etude No. 2, Mad Rush, Music in Similar Motion, and four movements from Glass’ score to the third of Godfrey Reggio’s trilogy (Koyaanisqatsi, Powaaqatsi, Naqoyqatsi): Naqoyqatsi, Massman, New World, and Old World.

It was after my second hearing of the disc that it occurred to me that Beiser’s transcriptions for cello with electronic looping and layering are in fact her own recompositions of these works in her own image, so to speak. Think Stravinsky’s Tchaikovsky transcriptions in “The Fairy’s Kiss” or Henze’s reworking of Telemann in his Telemanniana (other examples abound). Of course Beiser is working on a smaller scale but she is recomposing these works from a very personal perspective much as those composers did. I had been expecting to not like this album but once heard…

Beiser, a founding and long time member of the Bang on a Can All Stars, cut an elegant figure even when she was at the back of that venerable performing ensemble (got to be good looking cuz she’s so hard to see?). She has always been a highly skilled and accomplished cellist and a thoughtful, intelligent musician. That is true of all the members of the All Stars who started as highly skilled musicians with an interest in new music. Beiser is certainly also a member of the “glam classical” musicians following in the traditions of performers like Nigel Kennedy, Yuja Wang and, well… back at least to Liberace and perhaps Chopin and Liszt. The appellation, “glam classical” is descriptive rather than pejorative in intent. The reality is that all the aforementioned artists remained fine musicians throughout their careers. An imposing physical presence, after all, does not necessarily detract from the music. Quite the opposite sometimes.

Amazon lists this release as Beiser’s 14th album and she comes out strong on all fronts. Her playing, her interpretive skills, and her arrangements make for a very strong, complex, but listenable album. The first two etudes will be familiar to most listeners and are perhaps the most methodical with clear structures though very different from the piano originals. “Mad Rush” (also originally a piano piece) and “Music in Similar Motion” (originally for the Philip Glass Ensemble) both come off as driving ritual symphonic pieces, thrilling new readings of the original compositions (Music in Similar Motion a personal favorite for this writer and this version really rocks). The last four excerpts from Naqoyqatsi are the most lyrical and easy listening works, but again Beiser creates the music in her own personal context, glamorous but authentic and with a warmth that lasts long after the last tones fade. Fabulous album!

Das Lied von das Abstimmen: Michael Harrison’s “Seven Sacred Names”


Cantaloupe CA 21157

I first encountered the work of Michael Harrison (1958- ) while searching for Lou Harrison CDs. I came across the New Albion release, “From Ancient Worlds” (1992). It is a disc of short piano compositions played by the composer on an instrument of his own invention, The Harmonic Piano, which was conceived in 1979 and built by1986. Harrison was a student/apprentice of the Godfather of American Minimalism and Guru of non-western tunings, La Monte Young. He has also enjoyed a close relationship with yet another icon of contemporary music and non-western tunings, Terry Riley. Via these associations, Harrison has also studied with Pandit Pran Nath (famously a teacher of both Young and Riley) and Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan.

He holds a B.M. in composition from the University of Oregon, and and M.M. in composition from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Reiko Füting. His collaborations put him in touch with progressive musicians on both the east and west coasts of the United States and he seems to derive a great deal of joy sharing his enthusiasm with many talented artists imparting his knowledge and learning from them as well.

Mr. Harrison’s major opus, “Revelation” (2002-7) for solo harmonic piano is a sort of manifesto or “urtext” and has been the source and inspiration for much of his subsequent work both directly and indirectly. At his 2009 appearance at the Other Minds Festival 14 he premiered “Tone Clouds” (2008) which incorporated a string quartet (Del Sol Quartet) along with the composer at the piano utilizing material from Revelation. Subsequent recordings with cellists Maya Beiser and Clarice Jensen further expanded his use of string instruments along with the piano.

So here we come to Harrison’s second release on Cantaloupe Records (his first was the Maya Beiser release in 2012) this time incorporating Tim Fain (violin), Caleb Burhans (viola), Ashley Bathgate (cello), Payton MacDonald (vocals), Ina Filip (vocals), Ritvik Yaparpalvi (tabla), and Roomful of Teeth, the Grammy winning vocal ensemble in a work which strikes this listener as a grand nearly symphonic effort reminiscent of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Also, like Mahler, the composer uses non-western (Sufi) texts and (unlike Mahler) non-western tunings derived in part from Hindustani and Carnatic influences, and from his studies with Pran Nath, Terry Riley, and Mashkoor Ali Khan.

The eight sections vary in style but have echoes of Arvo Part, Hindustani/Carnatic musics, minimalism, etc. all integrated into a large form neatly bookended by a prelude and epilogue. It is, in effect, a song cycle and, guess what? It’s about the earth, well, sort of. It is, according to the liner notes by W.H.S. Gebel, music which corresponds to the seven stages of universal awakening outlined in that author’s book, “Nature’s Hidden Dimension”. Maybe Mahler for the New Age?

Only the second movement, “Hayy: Revealing the Tones” derives directly from the aforementioned Revelation but it is clear that Harrison has integrated his diverse musical studies into a personal style descended from artistic and philosophical ancestors. The work struck this listener as being a successfully unified whole and a landmark in this composers still burgeoning career. This is grand and gorgeous music.