Apr 28: Cellist Maya Beiser in Provenance, music insprired by Spain's Golden Age, at Mondavi Center
Saturday, April 28, 2012 at 10:54AM
in Provenance Saturday, April 28, 2012 at 8pm “a modern-day analogue with evocative modern works inspired by historical sources.” -- The New York Times Watch an excerpt of Provenance: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS3QKXah6pM Maya Beiser: www.mayabeiser.com Listen to NPR coverage of Provenance: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127218632 Davis, CA — Maya Beiser, described by The New Yorker as a “cello goddess” and by The Washington Post as “the diva of the cello,” will perform one of her signature multimedia concerts, Provenance, on Saturday, April 28 at 8pm presented by the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis. Provenance features music by Raz Mesinai, Simon Shaheen, Tamar Muskal, Evan Ziporyn, Hamza El Din, Douglas J. Cuomo, Kayhan Kalhor and Djivan Gasparian – hailing from Armenia, Kurdish Iran, Egypt, Israel, and the US – and is inspired by the Golden Age of mediaeval Spain when Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together peacefully, giving rise to a centuries-long flowering of commerce, culture, art, and architecture. In a world troubled by religious strife and division, Provenance offers a contemporary interpretation of this historic shared harmonious source, which lasted from the eighth to the fifteenth century. Provenance is 75 non-stop minutes of continuous thread where live music and original text in Ladino, Arabic, Hebrew and Latin are woven together into an all-encompassing musical tapestry. Beiser says, “Provenance outlines a musical landscape in which cultural differences are brought together for the artistic energy they release with each encounter. It embraces co-existence not as an abstract ideal but as a creative necessity.” Provenance also features Bassam Saba, oud; Shane Shanahan, percussion; and Matt Kilmer, percussion. Maya Beiser released her highly acclaimed recording of Provenance on the innova label in 2010; it peaked at No. 6 in overall music sales and No. 1 in classical music on Amazon. The album also ranked No. 1 in World Music on iTunes and No. 3 on the Billboard Classical Chart. Provenance was voted No. 2 on New York’s WQXR-FM’s listener poll. Beiser has captivated audiences worldwide with her virtuosity, eclectic repertoire, and relentless quest to redefine her instrument’s boundaries. Over the past decade, she has created new repertoire for the cello, commissioning and performing many works written for her by today’s leading composers. She has collaborated with composers Tan Dun, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, and Mark O’Connor, among many others. Beiser is a featured performer on the world’s most prestigious stages, having appeared as soloist at the Sydney Opera House, New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Barbican and the World Expo in Nagoya, Japan. Beiser was a featured speaker and performer at the 2011 TED conference; her TEDTalk has since garnered nearly half a million views online. Beiser has conceived, performed and produced her critically acclaimed multimedia concerts, including World To Come, which premiered as part of the inaugural season of Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall; Almost Human, a collaboration with visual artist Shirin Neshat; as well as Provenance. Her sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall have been chosen by The New York Times critics as among the “Best Of The Year.” Beiser is currently at work on her newest project Elsewhere, a CELLoOpera, which premieres in fall 2012. Elsewhere is an imaginative retelling of the Biblical legend of Lot's wife, created by Beiser with director Robert Woodruff, composers Missy Mazzoli and Eve Beglarian, writer Erin Cressida Wilson, and choreographer Karole Armitage. # # #
Maya Beiser, cellist
presented by the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis
Mondavi Center | UC Davis
Tickets: $12.50-$49 at 530.754.2787 or www.mondaviarts.org
Highlights of Maya Beiser's recent US tours include performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Royce Hall in Los Angeles, Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, Mondavi Performing Arts Center, Ravinia Festival in Chicago, Celebrity Series in Boston and International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven. Other recent performances include major venues and festivals in Barcelona, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Athens. She has appeared with many of the world’s top orchestras performing new works for the cello including the St. Paul Camber Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, China Philharmonic, and many others.
Beiser’s latest recording, Provenance, has been a topselling classical and world music CD since its release in 2010. Her performance of Steve Reich’s Cello Counterpoint is featured on the Nonesuch disc You Are, which was chosen by The New York Times as one of the top albums of the year. She is also the soloist on the Sony Classical CD release of Tan Dun’s Water Passion, and has performed his Academy Award-winning score Crouching Tiger Concerto with orchestras around the globe. She has released four solo CDs on E1 including Oblivion, Kinship, World To Come, and Almost Human.
Beiser has been a featured soloist on several film soundtracks. Collaborating with renowned film composer James Newton Howard, she is the featured soloist on M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters, Edward Zwick’s Blood Diamond, and Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman (to be released in June 2012).
Raised on a kibbutz in Israel by her French mother and Argentinean father, Maya Beiser is a graduate of Yale University. Her major teachers were Aldo Parisot, Uzi Weizel, Alexander Schneider, and Isaac Stern. Beiser was the founding cellist of the new music ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars.
