Maya Beiser Releases InfInIte Bach - Bach’s Six Cello Suites - in Spatial Audio & Immersive Binaural Mix on May 26
Maya Beiser Releases InfInIte Bach
J.S. Bach’s Six Cello Suites
Available in Full Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio
via Apple Music & in an Immersive Binaural Mix
Release Date: May 26, 2023
Islandia Music Records
New York, NY – On May 26, 2023, cellist and producer Maya Beiser will release InfInIte Bach on her Islandia Music Records label – her first recording of the complete Solo Cello Suites of J.S. Bach. Maya made this album in her converted barn in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, recording the Suites while exploring the varying frequencies and resonances of the room, in order to create layers of sound acoustically. InfInIte Bach will be released digitally in full Dolby Atmos spatial audio, available via Apple Music, and in an immersive binaural mix on all other platforms.
Maya writes of the process, “I spent 2022, my 60th year of life, immersed in recording, and rerecording, deconstructing and decontextualizing, experimenting and exploring sounds, reverberations, harmonics in my converted barn in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, engaging with Bach’s cello Suites. Having dedicated the past 35 years to creating new music, work that reimagines the cello on a vast canvas in multiple disciplines, I radically departed from the conventional classical cello sound. Yet, the Suites were ingrained in my daily practice. Even as I was getting ready to perform a new work by Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, or David Bowie, I would still begin every day playing a movement from the Suites. Over the years I was experimenting with the process of unlearning the doctrine I was taught about this music, until last year when I took the time to relearn it anew.”
Maya’s approach to this recording was inspired, in part, by Alvin Lucier’s seminal 1969 piece, I am sitting in a room. She writes, “I brought my longtime sound engineer and collaborator, Dave Cook, to the space and we started exploring the acoustic environment. I considered how the space itself uncovers, informs and reshapes my interpretation of the Suites, feeding back the music to me as I play and record it. We mixed many microphones placed at various distances in the resonant space to emphasize nuances in overtones, reflections, and reverberations. Analyzing the multichannel recording, identifying and accentuating the natural drones and harmonics, we further reinforced the resonances and macro harmonic structure of the music. In the spatial audio mix, we aimed to bring the listening experience into the room; guiding the listener through the virtual space as the music infinitely evolves around them.”
Maya Beiser’s InfInIte Bach engages the listener in a profound and all-encompassing way, moving us to reconsider the familiar while keeping whole Bach’s seminal work.
About Maya Beiser:
Describing cellist, producer, and multifaceted artist Maya Beiser, The New York Times writes, “The adventurous Ms. Beiser has been called the ‘cello goddess,’ which is not hyperbole: She summons from her instrument an emotional power so stirring that even the most stoic audience members risk turning into sobbing sacks of flesh.”
Passionately forging her artistic path through uncharted territories, Maya Beiser has been captivating audiences worldwide, bringing a bold and unorthodox presence to contemporary classical music, reimagining solo cello performance in the mainstream arena, and defying conventional norms with her boundary-crossing performances. Hailed as “the reigning queen of avant-garde cello” by The Washington Post, she has been called a “cello rock star,” by Rolling Stone and praised as “a force of nature,” by The Boston Globe.
Raised on a commune in Israel’s Galilee Mountains, by her Argentinean father and French mother, Maya spent her early life surrounded by the music and rituals of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, while studying classical cello repertoire. Throughout her extensive career she has been a featured performer on the world’s greatest stages among them Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, London’s Southbank Centre, Royal Albert Hall and the Barbican, the Sydney Opera House, Barcelona’s L’Auditori, Paris’ Cité de la Musique, Stockholm’s Concert Hall, and major venues across five continents. Among the wide range of artists with whom she has collaborated are Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Tan Dun, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Mark Anthony-Turnage, Shirin Neshat, Erin Cressida-Wilson, Bill Morrison, Robert Woodruff, Missy Mazzoli, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn, Pontus Lidberg, Wendy Whelan, Lucinda Childs, and Joe Hisaishi.
Maya’s vast discography includes fourteen solo albums, many of them topping the classical music charts. She is the featured soloist on numerous film soundtracks, including an extensive collaboration with composer James Newton Howard for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening and After Earth, Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters, Edward Zwick’s Blood Diamond, and Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman. Her performance of David Lang’s “world to come” has been featured on the soundtrack for Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar winning film, La Grande Bellezza.
Maya Beiser is a United States Artists (USA) Distinguished Fellow in Music and was a 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 TED Talk has been watched by millions of people. She has been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts and All Things Considered, PBS News Hour, and the BBC World News. Maya is a graduate of Yale University.
Track Listing:
Maya Beiser: Infinite Bach
Islandia Music Records
Release Date: May 26, 2023
J.S. Bach
1-6 Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007
7-12 Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008
13-18 Cello Suite No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1009
19-24 Cello Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major, BWV 1010
25-30 Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor, BWV 1011
31-36 Cello Suite No. 6 in D Major, BWV 1012
Produced by Maya Beiser
Recorded by Dave Cook at The Art at Foothill Farm, Lenox, MA
Edited and mixed by Dave Cook at Area 52 Studios, Saugerties, NY
Immersive mix and mastering by Scott Anthony at Storybook Sound, Maplewood, NJ
Photography by Hu Boyang
Art direction by Denise Burt
Creative Director: Kristen Loring Brennan
About Islandia Music Records:
Islandia Music Records is an independent record label founded and spearheaded by cellist and producer Maya Beiser, one of the foremost soloists and avant-garde artists of her generation. Maya Beiser’s desire to be the driving force behind her artistic expression led her to concentrate on an intensely rich and innovative solo career. She has engaged composers, choreographers, dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, sound designers, and technology innovators to create works written for her or by her and interpreted through her singular artistic lens. The freedom to chart her own course made it possible to become a game changer in the contemporary creative landscape. A platform for self-expression and daring artistic adventures, Islandia Music Records allows for a broad palette of collaborative patterns: between the old and the new, the brazen and the subtle, the dark and the hopeful.