Recently I was featured on NPR’s Weekend edition, chatting with Liane Hansen about my new CD, Provenance. If you missed it, you can check it out here:
Maya Beiser Returns the Cello to the Middle East

Liane and I had a great time talking about Provenance, which officially came out on May 25th. As NPR fans know, she’s a lively, well-informed, and insightful host, and it was a real pleasure to speak with her. Our conversation ranged from the historical to the whimsical, connecting the music on the disc to my personal journey as an artist.

And the rave reviews keep on coming:

“She’s a soulful cellist, to say the least, and powerfully so… there’s also always a marvelous sense of both exploration and control…”

“… A killer arrangement of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir… You won’t believe what she does with Kashmir, until you hear it. Electric shock isn’t the half of it. She takes the song over, singing, wailing, roaring it on her cello, in a way that’s fully Middle Eastern, and fully rock & roll. Maybe she even outdoes the original.”
-Greg Sandow, ArtsJournal
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“East-meets-West, rock music-meets-the ancient…”
“Beiser shows us that music can have power over ignorance… What’s so inspiring about Provenance (the simple beauty of the music aside) is seeing and hearing the results of threads (intentional and accidental) that can run through cultures…”
-Mark Saleski, blogcritics.org
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“ A warm, gorgeous tone; a flawless technique; and above all, an intense soulfulness.”
“Evocative, colorful, piercingly emotional music that sounds both ancient and freshly imagined…”
-Allmusic.com
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“The term “rock star” isn’t really applicable to the world of the cello, but if it was then Maya Beiser would be one.”
“Beiser’s skill with the cello is undeniable – she seems to be able to wrench a wide range of emotions from her instrument, to the point that it sounds like a de facto vocalist (her take on “Kashmir” is very reminiscent of Robert Plant’s vocal melody)…This release should appeal equally to fans of contemporary classical, world music, or really anyone who just enjoys listening to great music performed with equal parts skill and devotion.”
-Greyflannelsuit.net
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“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.”

Read eMusic’s Jayson Greene’s interview with Maya