Cellist Maya Beiser Set for Rubin Museum of Art's BRAINWAVE: MIND OVER MATTER Series Today

New York, NY - Cellist Maya Beiser will participate in the Rubin Museum of Art's Brainwave: Mind Over Matter series with cognitive psychologist Jamshed Barucha tonight, January 11, 2014 at 6pm at the Rubin Museum of Art (150 West 17th Street). Maya will perform composer Michael Harrison's Just Ancient Loops, a 25-minute piece with a film by Bill Morrison, and will converse with Barucha, the President of Cooper Union, about tonality and what effect music has on our psyche and wellbeing. The seventh annual Brainwave, a series of on-stage conversations, films and experiences, explores the role the brain plays in helping us overcome adversity, survive tests of endurance, and understand faith.

Composer Michael Harrison's Just Ancient Loops, with a film by Bill Morrison that presents a unique view of the heavens, unveils every aspect of the cello - from its most glorious and mysterious harmonics to earthy, rhythmic pizzicatos - all utilizing "just intonation," an ancient tuning system in which the distances between notes are based upon whole number ratios.

Just Ancient Loops was composed for Maya Beiser and dedicated to her. The work can be described as an "orchestra" of cellos as it gradually builds up to a climax of twenty-two independent, pre-recorded cello parts. Composed between 2007 and 2011, including approximately three weeks in the recording studio recording and mixing the tracks with Grammy Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse, Just Ancient Loops is a large and complex work, devoted to exploring the enormous range and sonic possibilities of the cello when played in pure intonation. Each cello part was recorded by Maya, and in performance she plays the lead part supported and surrounded by all of the pre-recorded parts.

Maya Beiser's premiere of Just Ancient Loops at the Bang on a Can Marathon in June 2012 was highlighted in The New York Times, which reported, "Michael Harrison's Just Ancient Loops, an appealing mix of live and recorded cello lines, raga-inspired drones and Minimalist rhythms performed by Maya Beiser, was enhanced by Bill Morrison's film, recorded on archival and decaying celluloid, and repurposed for Georges Méliès-style fantasy and sublimity." Her recording of the piece as part of the album Time Loops was chosen as among NPR Music's top recordings of 2012.

Throughout her adventurous and versatile career, Maya Beiser has redefined the concert experience, creating music that transcends genres with large sonic and visual canvases. The Boston Globe declares, "With virtuoso chops, rock-star charisma, and an appetite for pushing her instrument to the edge of avant-garde adventurousness, Maya Beiser is the post-modern diva of the cello." New York magazine writes, "Beiser in not the sort of musician who zigzags around the planet playing catalog music for polite and sleepy audiences. She throws down a gauntlet in every program."

Maya 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; and Provenance, which forms the basis of her best selling album. Top New York critics have consistently chosen her Carnegie Hall concerts on their "Best Of The Year" lists. Maya's last production, Elsewhere: a CelloOpera, premiered in October 2012 at Carolina Performing Arts followed by a sold-out run at the BAM Next Wave Festival. Elsewhere is an imaginative retelling of the Biblical legend of Lot's wife, created by Maya with director Robert Woodruff.

Raised in the Galilee Mountains in Israel, surrounded with the music and rituals of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, while studying classical cello repertoire, Maya has dedicated her work to reinventing solo cello performance in the mainstream classical arena. A featured performer on the world's most prestigious stages, Maya has appeared as soloist at the Sydney Opera House, New York's Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and BAM, London's Barbican, Royal Albert Hall, and South Bank Center, and the World Expo in Nagoya, Japan. She has collaborated with artists across a wide range of musical styles, including Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Tan Dun, James Newton Howard and Carter Burwell, among many others.

In 2011, Maya was invited to present at the exclusive TED conference. Her TEDtalk performance has been watched by close to one million people and translated to 32 languages. In summer 2013, she was a featured guest alongside such luminaries as Yoko Ono, Marina Abramovi?, Isabella Rossellini, and Shirin Neshat at ICASTICA 2013, an international festival celebrating women artists working in all artistic fields in Arezzo, Italy.

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, Amsterdam, Torino, Tokyo, Taipei, Athens, Mexico City and Bogota. 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 Shanghai Philharmonic among many others.

Maya's vast discography, released on Sony Classical, Nonesuch, Koch (now E1) Innova and Cantaloupe labels, include five solo albums and many studio recordings and film music collaborations. Her 2010 album Provenance topped the classical and world music charts on both Amazon and iTunes. Maya's latest recording, Time Loops, was selected among NPR's top 10 recordings of 2012. Collaborating with renowned film composer James Newton Howard, Maya is the featured soloist on several film's soundtracks including M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters, Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond, Rupert Sanders' Snow White and the Huntsman and M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth.

Maya Beiser is a graduate of Yale University. Her major teachers were Aldo Parisot, Uzi Weizel, Alexander Schneider, and Isaac Stern. Maya was the founding cellist of the new music ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars. She is managed by Opus 3 Artists. Maya can be found on Twitter, tweeting as @cellogoddess, a moniker bestowed upon her by The New Yorker. www.mayabeiser.com

About Jamshed Bharucha: Jamshed Bharucha is the twelfth President of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. A cognitive neuroscientist, he has published extensively on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of music, and has been awarded grants from NSF and NIH for his work. More recently, he has written and lectured widely on the challenges facing higher education, emphasizing the need for bold innovations in learning and global engagement. President Bharucha began his academic career at Dartmouth College, where he was named the John Wentworth Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences. A signature accomplishment of his administrative work at Dartmouth was the creation of the nation's first brain imaging facility for the study of cognitive neuroscience outside of a clinical setting. In 2002, Bharucha was appointed Provost and Senior Vice President of Tufts University. Under his leadership as Provost, annual sponsored research doubled to $175 million, revenues from the transfer of technology increased eight-fold to $8 million, and the university launched an international strategy focusing on Mexico, India and China. President Bharucha is a classically trained violinist, having received an Associate's Diploma in Violin Performance from the Trinity College of Music, London, in 1973.

About Bill Morrison, filmmaker: Over the past twenty years Bill Morrison has built a filmography of more than thirty projects that have been presented in theaters, museums, galleries, and concert halls worldwide. Variety calls him, "One of the most adventurous American filmmakers" His work often makes use of rare archival footage in which forgotten film imagery is reframed as part of our collective mythology. Morrison's films are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, The Nederlands Filmmuseum, and The Library of Congress. He is a Guggenheim fellow and has received the Alpert Award for the Arts, an NEA Creativity Grant, a Creative Capital grant, and a fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His work with Ridge Theater has been recognized with two Bessie awards and an Obie Award.www.billmorrisonfilm.com

About Michael Harrison, composer: Michael Harrison, composer and pianist, has been called "an American Maverick" by Philip Glass. Through his expertise in "just intonation" tunings, Indian ragas and rhythmic cycles, he has created "a new harmonic world...of vibrant sound" (The New York Times). With a uniquely personal style that transcends the ages, his music is both forward looking and deeply rooted in different forms of traditional music. This unique perspective alongside a simple and elegant gift for melody, makes him a composer that can reach audiences of many kinds. Revelation, Michael's first recording for the Cantaloupe Music label (a multi-year project), was chosen by The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Time Out New York as one of the Best Classical Recordings of the year, and received awards from the Classical Recording Foundation and IBLA Foundation. During his time at the University of Oregon, Michael traveled to New York City where he worked closely with La Monte Young preparing all of the specialized tunings and scores for Young's 6½-hour work, The Well-Tuned Piano. In 1987, Michael became the only other person besides the composer to perform this extended work. In 1986, Michael designed and created the "harmonic piano," an extensively modified grand piano with the ability to play 24 notes per octave. Michael is the president of the American Academy of Indian Classical Music. He is a disciple of the late Pandit Pran Nath, with whom he studied since 1979, and has performed solo and with Terry Riley as a vocalist, pianist, and on tamboura in numerous concerts and trips to India. Since 1999, he has continued his studies and performances with master Indian vocalist Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan. His recordings have been released on Cantaloupe Music, New Albion Records, Important Records, and Fortuna Records. www.michaelharrison.com