Cellist Maya Beiser Creates A Multi-layered Sonic Kaleidoscope In Her New Recording Of Music By Philip Glass

“I think the one thing that probably can define my career is the fact that it was always surprising in some way or another, to me, and I never limited myself in any sort of dogma. Even though I’m classically trained, and I started to play very young, I’ve always wanted to expand the vocabulary,” said Beiser. “In my mind, music is a very visual thing, and is a very expansive form of art, and so to me, it connects to everything. And I always felt that I wanted to create these big sound sculptures with my cello, and so of course… the technology that we have today really allows me to do that.”

“Taking in, as a child, all these different types of music – the Mediterranean, the beautiful music of Arabic tradition… Jewish music, the tango music… Brian Eno and avant-garde music, John Cage – all of it together, for me, the one thread was that it was all music,” said Beiser. “I never saw or felt the boundaries that we sometimes put into these different genres, and so I think that I just set out… to allow myself to be open, always, to anything that touches me. So I’m much less interested in genres or in all these kind of boundaries that we put between us as people, and much more interested in the deeper connection that exists, and that all these different types of music, I think, reveal.”

On Philip Glass’s music and the adventure of recreating it:

“The thing about Philip Glass’s music… it’s beautiful music, music that breathes. It’s music that ostensibly is very simple, but actually the way that it evolves is, in fact, quite complex,” said Beiser. “His music has this sort of pureness to it, in my mind very similar to Bach’s music, albeit from a different century and different aesthetic. But it comes from that same place. It flows.”

“With this album in particular, I was thinking about strata, which is the layering that occurs in rocks which are formed on the Earth’s surface. And I was imagining the layers of my cello becoming porous, and that Philip Glass’s music kind of flows through each layer, kind of like lava, creating new patterns and expanding into the landscape. So I think Etude No.5 could reveal that, because it starts very small and it slowly expands and becomes this whole universe of sound.”

“In, particularly I feel, Naqoyqatsi, the music is just so tremendous, and in some way it transcends the film, which is why I felt that it was okay to record it as a music piece on it’s own. Because it’s so powerful, and so beautiful, and so poignant in its way of illustrating our human experience,” said Beiser. “I feel like, in particular in these times that we are living today… just such a sense of grief around, for me, what we do to each other, and how we are unable to see the humanity in all of us. And so I think you don’t necessarily need to see the film, or know anything about it, because Philip Glass’s music is just there, and it tells you everything you need to know.”

Maya Beiser’s new album Maya Beiser x Philip Glass is out now and available to download, stream, and order via www.mayabeiser.com.