In the Press: Features
Innovative Cellist Presents Work-in-Progress at MoCA
“[Beiser states,] ‘I think in many ways, the message in this piece is about beauty. There’s so much beauty in that music and there’s going to be a lot of beautiful images also, and there’s beauty in nature, and it’s about embracing all of that and understanding that there’s all this stuff. There are things that we cannot control. There are things that we can control; we can control our actions.’”
-The North Adams Transcript
“[Beiser states,] ‘I think in many ways, the message in this piece is about beauty. There’s so much beauty in that music and there’s going to be a lot of beautiful images also, and there’s beauty in nature, and it’s about embracing all of that and understanding that there’s all this stuff. There are things that we cannot control. There are things that we can control; we can control our actions.’”
-The North Adams Transcript
Maya Beiser’s Cello Opera “Elsewhere” Includes Dance, Video at Mass MoCA 12/10
“By incorporating cello, vocals, spoken word, video, dance, and elaborate sets, the piece draws the audience into their catastrophic worlds…”
-Berkshire On Stage
“By incorporating cello, vocals, spoken word, video, dance, and elaborate sets, the piece draws the audience into their catastrophic worlds…”
-Berkshire On Stage
Cellist Faces the End of the World
“Both sections are about the end of the world in some manner, and Beiser recognizes that this issue is part of daily life in our current era [...] though her hope is that they won’t dominate their piece so much as function as part of the thematic mix… [Beiser states,] ‘I think in many ways, the message in this piece is about beauty. There’s so much beauty in that music and there’s going to be a lot of beautiful images also, and there’s beauty in nature, and it’s about embracing all of that and understanding that there’s all this stuff. There are things that we cannot control. There are things that we can control; we can control our actions.’”
-John Seven, The North Adams Transcript
“Both sections are about the end of the world in some manner, and Beiser recognizes that this issue is part of daily life in our current era [...] though her hope is that they won’t dominate their piece so much as function as part of the thematic mix… [Beiser states,] ‘I think in many ways, the message in this piece is about beauty. There’s so much beauty in that music and there’s going to be a lot of beautiful images also, and there’s beauty in nature, and it’s about embracing all of that and understanding that there’s all this stuff. There are things that we cannot control. There are things that we can control; we can control our actions.’”
-John Seven, The North Adams Transcript
Maya Beiser: Musical Cubism, Provenance, and the Creative Performer
“There is no doubt that cellist Maya Beiser is a dynamic performer. But her command is not limited to conventional concert stages. Video of her recent TED Talks presentation has garnered over 296,000 views online, no small feat for a performance of contemporary classical music. This seems right in line with the musician’s career as a whole, which seems predicated on presenting music as the ultimate unifying experience.”
-Daniel Kushner, The Huffington Post
“There is no doubt that cellist Maya Beiser is a dynamic performer. But her command is not limited to conventional concert stages. Video of her recent TED Talks presentation has garnered over 296,000 views online, no small feat for a performance of contemporary classical music. This seems right in line with the musician’s career as a whole, which seems predicated on presenting music as the ultimate unifying experience.”
-Daniel Kushner, The Huffington Post
Maya at TED2011
Maya Featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday
“Maya Beiser Returns The Cello To The Middle East.” Click here to listen to the broadcast and read the full article!
“I’m always trying to take the cello to new territory,” Maya Beiser claims. Over the course of her eclectic recording career, she has lived up to her word, dragging her cello through the Renaissance and traditional Chinese and Taiwanese song, into collaborations with visual artists and multimedia presentations, through Astor Piazolla tangos and into the 20th-century avant-garde and beyond. Her throaty, sonorous tone, wandering musical intelligence and impeccable taste in composers are often the only things uniting records as distinct as the unnerving Almost Human, which explored the cello’s eerie proximity to the human voice, and World to Come, a plaintive collection of spiritual pieces including Arvo Part’s spine-tingling “Fratres.”
-emusic.com
-emusic.com
Bringing Back the Golden Age
“If you would be surprised to find a cello rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” on an album with the 15th-century music of Spanish Jews, you haven’t met Maya Beiser. A cellist whose fifth solo release, Provenance, mixes contemporary rock and ancient Ladino music, Beiser has made a career out of pushing the boundaries of classic songs.”
-New Voices Magazine
“If you would be surprised to find a cello rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” on an album with the 15th-century music of Spanish Jews, you haven’t met Maya Beiser. A cellist whose fifth solo release, Provenance, mixes contemporary rock and ancient Ladino music, Beiser has made a career out of pushing the boundaries of classic songs.”
-New Voices Magazine
Maya Beiser: A Rebel With a Cello
“Beiser has distinguished herself by being rebellious musically, defying classical orthodoxies while exploring new forms and seeking new audiences… she has managed to walk an artistic tightrope between tradition and innovation, musical complexity and popular success.”
-The Jewish Daily Forward
“Beiser has distinguished herself by being rebellious musically, defying classical orthodoxies while exploring new forms and seeking new audiences… she has managed to walk an artistic tightrope between tradition and innovation, musical complexity and popular success.”
-The Jewish Daily Forward
Listen: Maya Beiser
“For most of us, rebellion in high school is associated with listening to The Cure or dyeing our hair a terrible color. For Maya Beiser, who grew up in the hills of Galilee, Israel, surrounded by music, rebellion took the form of playing the cello…”
-The Weekly Dig
“For most of us, rebellion in high school is associated with listening to The Cure or dyeing our hair a terrible color. For Maya Beiser, who grew up in the hills of Galilee, Israel, surrounded by music, rebellion took the form of playing the cello…”
-The Weekly Dig
Maya Beiser: Ideas that You Can Hold Onto, or that Recurse and Hold Onto You
“The performance by cellist Maya Beiser last night in Boston in the Celebrity Series was deeply inspiring… Maya Beiser’s repertoire enthusiastically propels the audience from ‘intention’ to ‘reception’ to ‘understanding’ and ‘liking’. Maya’s cello technic is astounding—a spectacle in its own right well worth the ticket price just to see this. She and her production team put great effort into visual spectacle as well… (Classical music presenters, take note!)”
- Chamber Music Today
“The performance by cellist Maya Beiser last night in Boston in the Celebrity Series was deeply inspiring… Maya Beiser’s repertoire enthusiastically propels the audience from ‘intention’ to ‘reception’ to ‘understanding’ and ‘liking’. Maya’s cello technic is astounding—a spectacle in its own right well worth the ticket price just to see this. She and her production team put great effort into visual spectacle as well… (Classical music presenters, take note!)”
- Chamber Music Today
Maya Beiser and the ‘Zankelfication’ of Classical Music
“…the album, filled with yearning cello solos and hypnotic desert sounds…”
-Zachary Woolfe, Capital New York
“…the album, filled with yearning cello solos and hypnotic desert sounds…”
-Zachary Woolfe, Capital New York
A Human Voice From a Cello’s Strings
“Cellist Maya Beiser defies the stereotype of a classically trained, pitch-perfect, Yale-educated musician. She wants her career to resemble that of a pop star rather than a classical artist. She cites Led Zeppelin and Nine Inch Nails among her influences…”
-Rachel Beckman, Washington Post
“Cellist Maya Beiser defies the stereotype of a classically trained, pitch-perfect, Yale-educated musician. She wants her career to resemble that of a pop star rather than a classical artist. She cites Led Zeppelin and Nine Inch Nails among her influences…”
-Rachel Beckman, Washington Post
Spotlight on Maya Beiser
“Maya Beiser is a classically trained cellist, but nobody with even a slight acquaintance with classical music would ever mistake her performance for a traditional one. Beiser attacks the cello the way Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Kobain, and Jimmy Page attacked the guitar–with attitude, playfulness, and rock-and-roll showmanship.”
-Dmitry Kip, Current Biography
“Maya Beiser is a classically trained cellist, but nobody with even a slight acquaintance with classical music would ever mistake her performance for a traditional one. Beiser attacks the cello the way Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Kobain, and Jimmy Page attacked the guitar–with attitude, playfulness, and rock-and-roll showmanship.”
-Dmitry Kip, Current Biography
A Cellist Who Loves Led Zeppelin
“Though no category of performers has a monopoly on adventurousness, cellists seem to be an especially daring lot…Maya Beiser is the latest addition to the list. She’s carved out an idiosyncratic career working with composers who reach across geographic and stylistic spectra.”
-David Weininger, Boston Globe
“Though no category of performers has a monopoly on adventurousness, cellists seem to be an especially daring lot…Maya Beiser is the latest addition to the list. She’s carved out an idiosyncratic career working with composers who reach across geographic and stylistic spectra.”
-David Weininger, Boston Globe
Cellist Brings a Whole Lotta Love For Led Zep to Pops Gig
“I had to sneak around to listen to Led Zeppelin when I was little. I loved it, but I was being classically trained. But now the music world is different and it’s more important to be who we are, to explore all of your interests…”
-Keith Powers, Boston Herald
“I had to sneak around to listen to Led Zeppelin when I was little. I loved it, but I was being classically trained. But now the music world is different and it’s more important to be who we are, to explore all of your interests…”
-Keith Powers, Boston Herald
While in Boston, Maya met with Marco Werman of PRI/BBC’s “The World” to discuss her latest repertoire and perform in the studio. You can listen to the broadcast here:
Maya Beiser on PRI/BBC’s “The World”
Maya Beiser on PRI/BBC’s “The World”
“Maya Beiser’s heady new work unites the sounds of the East and West in a stunning multimedia show.”
“String Theory” by Marc Geelhoed, Time Out Chicago
“String Theory” by Marc Geelhoed, Time Out Chicago
Maya Beiser: Perhaps there is a fear of having a woman lead the avant-garde
“Her concerts attract multitudes…”
-Pablo Espinosa, La Journada
“Her concerts attract multitudes…”
-Pablo Espinosa, La Journada
An Artistic Trek Across a Surreal Land of Sand and Self-Discovery
“As snow fell lightly on Broome Street in SoHo one evening last month, three women in their 40′s sipped tea inside an artist’s studio and charted a journey through unfamiliar territory. The landscape, viewed on an iMac monitor, was at once barren and lush, its undulating sands and craggy outcroppings morphing into gently rhythmic waves. It could have been anywhere.”
-Kathryn Shattuck, New York Times
“As snow fell lightly on Broome Street in SoHo one evening last month, three women in their 40′s sipped tea inside an artist’s studio and charted a journey through unfamiliar territory. The landscape, viewed on an iMac monitor, was at once barren and lush, its undulating sands and craggy outcroppings morphing into gently rhythmic waves. It could have been anywhere.”
-Kathryn Shattuck, New York Times
Maya Beiser conjures vast sonic vistas all by herself in “World to Come” at Zankel Hall
” ‘World To Come’ hits a new high point in a career marked by experimentation and adventure.The Israeli-born daughter of French and Argentinean parents, Beiser is best known for her stellar musicianship – and undeniable glamour…..”
-Steve Smith, Time Out New York
” ‘World To Come’ hits a new high point in a career marked by experimentation and adventure.The Israeli-born daughter of French and Argentinean parents, Beiser is best known for her stellar musicianship – and undeniable glamour…..”
-Steve Smith, Time Out New York
Cellist Beiser fiddles with Tradition
“I have a very rigid classical training…It wasn’t until I came to the U.S. and Yale that I began to explore other music in a formal way.”
-Wynne Delacoma, Chicago Sun-Times
“I have a very rigid classical training…It wasn’t until I came to the U.S. and Yale that I began to explore other music in a formal way.”
-Wynne Delacoma, Chicago Sun-Times
Rebel Cello
“I like to generate music and be more than merely an interpretative artist,” says cellist Maya Beiser, regarding her one-woman multimedia show…”
-Dennis Polkow, New City
“I like to generate music and be more than merely an interpretative artist,” says cellist Maya Beiser, regarding her one-woman multimedia show…”
-Dennis Polkow, New City
She Plays, She Vocalizes, She Accompanies Herself
“Maya it seems to me, is doing for the cello what the Kronos quartet did for the string quartet. She is a soloist-quality cellist, and instead of playing Kodaly and Bach, she is commissioning new works, using electronics, presenting a show with a lot of different media. She is saying: ‘This is a different way to go.’”
-Steve Reich as quoted by Allan Kozinn
-Allan Kozinn, New York Times [2 pages]
“Maya it seems to me, is doing for the cello what the Kronos quartet did for the string quartet. She is a soloist-quality cellist, and instead of playing Kodaly and Bach, she is commissioning new works, using electronics, presenting a show with a lot of different media. She is saying: ‘This is a different way to go.’”
-Steve Reich as quoted by Allan Kozinn
-Allan Kozinn, New York Times [2 pages]
Burning Desires
“…superstar cellist Maya Beiser stands on the edge of a seemingly endless universe of possibilities. Young, vibrant, ready to take on the proverbial world, this singular artist has a number of things to say about not only the state of concert music, but about the way an artist in the 21st century ought to behave…Her polished onstage persona – cross a deeply serious, technically honed classical musician with a fiercely sexy, attitude-driven pop star and you will have some idea – is part and parcel of the “no boundaries” ideal Beiser is practicing…… “In the better world that I wish existed” says Beiser, “there would be no classifications.”
-Daniel Felsenfeld, Strings Magazine [3 pages]
“…superstar cellist Maya Beiser stands on the edge of a seemingly endless universe of possibilities. Young, vibrant, ready to take on the proverbial world, this singular artist has a number of things to say about not only the state of concert music, but about the way an artist in the 21st century ought to behave…Her polished onstage persona – cross a deeply serious, technically honed classical musician with a fiercely sexy, attitude-driven pop star and you will have some idea – is part and parcel of the “no boundaries” ideal Beiser is practicing…… “In the better world that I wish existed” says Beiser, “there would be no classifications.”
-Daniel Felsenfeld, Strings Magazine [3 pages]
Gunslinger a Dab Hand with the Bow
“…virtuoso exponent and a hurricane of change for classical music.”
-Lenny Ann Low, Sydney Morning Herald
“…virtuoso exponent and a hurricane of change for classical music.”
-Lenny Ann Low, Sydney Morning Herald
