Maya Beiser to Play Two Shows at Big Ears This Month

"Cello goddess" (The New Yorker) Maya Beiser will perform two shows at this year's Big Ears Festival. On Friday, March 24, at 10:30am she opens the day with Morning Trance, a solo show at The Mill & Mine, and on Saturday, March 25 at 6:30pm she takes the stage at the Bijou Theatre for Uncovered, classic rock reimagined with Glenn Kotche, drums and Gyan Riley, bass.

Maya's Morning Trance concert on Friday at 10:30am at The Mill & Mine features inspiring music written for or arranged by Maya, chosen to help festival attendees greet the day with her. Maya's set features Michael Gordon's mesmerizing All Vows and David Lang's heart-wrenching World To Come, both written for her, plus Maya's own arrangements of J.S. Bach's Air on G, which evokes the sound of an old LP spinning on a distant turntable, and John Tavener's trance-like Lament to Phaedra, for which she'll be joined by ACME cellist Clarice Jensen. World to Come and Lament to Phaedra are included on Maya's bestselling album World to Come. Air on G and All Vows are included on her latest album, TranceClassical, which was released in July 2016 and debuted at No. 1 on the Apple Music classical chart.

Maya's Uncovered on Saturday at 6:30pm at the Bijou Theatre is a show of startling classic rock tunes, re-imagined and re-contextualized, in stunning performances by Maya alongside "mind-blowing" (Acoustic Guitar) bassist Gyan Riley and legendary ?WILCO drummer Glenn Kotche. A cover tune can be an homage to the original, but these "uncovers," in new arrangements by composer Evan Ziporyn, do more - they evoke the unprecedented power of the music of Led Zeppelin ("Black Dog," "Kashmir"), Jimi Hendrix ("Little Wing"), Pink Floyd ("Wish You Were Here"), Nirvana ("Lithium"), Janis Joplin ("Summertime"), Howlin' Wolf ("Moanin' at Midnight"), King Crimson ("Epitaph"), and AC/DC ("Back in Black"). Uncovered, the album, topped the Apple Music charts and was in the top 10 on the Billboard Classical Chart. Maya's performances in Uncovered are incendiary, in line with New York Magazine's assessment that "Beiser is not the sort of musician who zigzags around the planet playing catalog music for polite and sleepy audiences. She throws down the gauntlet in every program."

Cellist Maya Beiser defies categories. Passionately forging a career path through uncharted territories, she has captivated audiences worldwide with her virtuosity, eclectic repertoire, and relentless quest to redefine her instrument's boundaries. 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," while Rolling Stone calls her a "cello rock star."

Raised in the Galilee Mountains in Israel, surrounded by 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 including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, London's South Bank Centre, Sydney Opera House, Beijing Festival, Big Ears festival, and the Barbican's Sound Unbound, she has collaborated with a wide range of artists across many disciplines, including Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Shirin Neshat, Steve Reich, David Lang, Tan Dun, RoBert Woodruff, Bill Morrison, Evan Ziporyn and Osvaldo Golijov, among many others.

Maya's critically acclaimed multimedia productions World To Come, Almost Human, Provenance, Elsewhere: A Cello Opera, and All Vows have consistently been chosen for top critics' "Best Of The Year" lists. Her latest production, All Vows, premiered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2014 and has since been on tour in the US including performances in Washington, DC; Dallas; Houston; Chicago; and New York. Other recent and upcoming highlights include featured solo performances as part of the Barbican's Sound Unbound festival in London; two new cello concerti premieres, Mohammed Fairouz's cello concerto with the Detroit Symphony and Mark Anthony Turnage's cello concerto with the Swedish Chamber orchestra; two multimedia, solo production collaborations with David Lang and Julia Wolfe; and premiere performances of Blackstar with orchestra, David Bowie's complete final album re-imagined as a cello concerto by Evan Ziporyn.

Highlights of Maya's tours include performances at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, Celebrity Series in Boston, Ojai Music Festival, International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, and 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 Chamber Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, BBC Concert Orchestra, Boston Pops, Sydney Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Nashville Symphony, China Philharmonic, and Shanghai Philharmonic, among many others.

In addition to TranceClassical, Maya's vast discography includes nine 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, and her album Time Loops was selected among NPR's top 10 recordings of 2012. Her album Uncovered, a collection of re-imagined and re-contextualized classic rock masterpieces, made the top 10 on the Billboard Classical Chart.

Maya Beiser is a 2015 United States Artists (USA) Distinguished Fellow in Music and a 2017 Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology. Invited to present at the prestigious TED main stage in Long Beach, CA, Maya's 2011 TEDtalk has been watched by close to one million people and translated to 32 languages. In 2013, she was a featured guest alongside such luminaries as Yoko Ono, Marina Abramovi?, and Isabella Rossellini at ICASTICA, a festival celebrating women working in artistic fields in Arezzo, Italy. Maya is a graduate of Yale University and was a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

For more information, visit www.mayabeiser.com.

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