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Maya Beiser, who plays with the Boston Pops next week, says she represents a generation of classical musicians ''embracing a much larger palette of musical styles.'' (Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times/File 2008) |
Classical notes
A cellist who loves Led Zeppelin
Though no category of performers has a monopoly on adventurousness, cellists seem to be an especially daring lot. Think of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road explorations, Matt Haimovitz's pathbreaking club performances, or ex-Kronos cellist Joan Jeanrenaud's experiments in improvisation.
Maya Beiser is the latest addition to the list. Beiser, who plays with the Boston Pops next week, was one of the founding members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars in 1992; since leaving that important group in 2002, she's carved out an idiosyncratic career working with composers who reach across geographic and stylistic spectra. She's become known for her thematically based solo programs, which use video, lighting, and spoken narration to take the musical experience outside of its accustomed boundaries.
"I think we're just rebels in our hearts," Beiser says with a laugh, speaking by phone from the West Coast. "Something that attracted me to playing the cello as a little girl was the fact that it felt like the odd instrument out. But it really lends itself to so many different genres."
So many, in fact, that the whole notion of genre itself is becoming increasingly unhelpful to Beiser and similarly inclined artists. Asked what she's been listening to on her iPod, she mentions African vocal music, gamelan music, the White Stripes, Arcade Fire, Janis Joplin, and Led Zeppelin.
"I think I represent a young generation of classically trained musicians who grew up performing mainstream repertoire but are embracing a much larger palette of musical styles," she says. "Which is really a natural outcome of living in this global environment."
Actually, the Zeppelin tracks are there largely because she's been working on an arrangement of the band's "Kashmir" by MIT composer and ex-Bang on a Can colleague Evan Ziporyn. The arrangement, which involves 12 separate cello parts, will be on Beiser's Pops program next week; she'll play it solo with prerecorded tracks. The larger work on her program is the premiere of a suite by film composer James Newton Howard derived from his score for M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village."
Beiser calls Howard, with whom she's worked before, "a really remarkable composer," and adds that film music is another example of genres being productively bent. "There's a renewed, or maybe completely new, interest in the artistry of composers who work in that medium. For years, there was a sense that you're either a serious composer and you write concert music or you can sell yourself to the devil and go to Hollywood. But the truth is that there are some phenomenal musicians working in film. Because in many ways it's our prevailing art form."
Beiser is able to stretch even more widely in her solo performances, which often resemble multimedia events more than traditional concerts. One of the more popular is "Almost Human," a program whose works delve into ancient vocal traditions to underscore the cello's similarity to the human voice. Her most recent creation is "Provenance," in which a varied group of composers reimagine the culture of medieval Spain.
Though the themes are heady, the cellist says that when casting for projects, "ultimately, I'm looking for the strong, the visceral - music that I can relate to on that level. I very much appreciate ideas, but in the end, I want to play music that I respond to on the really strong emotional level."
Among the projects Beiser has on the horizon is a collaboration with Brian Eno. It brings to mind Bang on a Can's celebrated, decade-old arrangement of "Music for Airports," the first shot in Eno's ambient music revolution. Created in the studio with tape loops, the music was designed to fit comfortably into the background rather than stand out and draw attention to itself. The All-Stars arranged "Music for Airports" for live performers, recorded it, and performed it at several European airports as dazed travelers wandered by.
"Some people were completely taken aback and were probably thinking, 'What the heck is this?' " she remembers. "But this is the great thing about Eno - the idea that you can play music and people can choose to listen or not. And that it could kind of penetrate or you could be oblivious to it.
"It's also a very revealing experience as a performer," she continues. "It kind of takes away that whole narcissistic thing of 'Here I am, now you have to pay attention to me.' There's something very humbling about playing and not necessarily having everybody focus on you. It allows you to kind of go and explore other things."
Tuesday and Wednesday at Symphony Hall; 888-266-1200, www.bso.org
New operas from Juventas
The annual Juventas Opera Project is the new music ensemble's vehicle for producing chamber operas by young composers. This year's installment is a double bill: Matthew Cooper Vest's Holocaust drama "The Hourglass," and a kung fu-inspired creation called "The Year of the Serpent" by the group's executive director, Erin Huelskamp. Performances are this weekend at the Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre.
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