Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar Maya Beiser, Ambient Orchestra & Evan Ziporyn

• David Bowie (1947 - 2016):
• 1 Blackstar 11:26
• 2 Tis a Pity She Was a Whore 04:41
• 3 Lazarus 06:45
• Evan Ziporyn (b. 1959), Maya Beiser (b. 1963):
• 4 Prelude to Sue 01:26
• David Bowie, Maria Schneider, Bob Bhamra, Paul Bateman:
• 5 Sue (Or in a Season of Crime) 04:59
• David Bowie:
• 6 Girl Loves Me 05:03
• 7 Dollar Days 04:33
• 8 I Can't Give Everything Away 06:44
• Total Runtime 45:37

Info for Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar

Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar is a soaring new version of David Bowie's entire last album Blackstar reimagined for solo cello and orchestra. Arranged for Maya Beiser by Evan Ziporyn, Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar has been performed to great acclaim in Boston, Barcelona, New York City's Central Park SummerStage, Austin TX, Palo Alto California, Burlington Vermont and Adelaide, Australia.

Maya has been joined in performance by Ambient Orchestra (conducted by Evan Ziporyn), The Barcelona Symphony and ensemble LPR. The Boston Globe recently described Beiser as “a force of nature,” and wrote of the performance of Blackstar in Boston last year, “The orchestra’s approach took advantage of the rich, jazz-infused harmonic palette of ‘Blackstar.’ As the rest of the strings rose up in deep menace and then flitted away like shadows, Beiser’s cello replaced the vocals of ‘Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)’ with a shivering panic. . . ‘Lazarus’ reached further down into the grave and further up toward the stars all at once.”

Beiser and Ziporyn's Blackstar is an homage to David Bowie, who died in January 2016 shortly after the album was released. For both musicians, the ambitious project is a personal one. “To me and my generation, Bowie was a model for what it meant to be an artist or creative person,” Ziporyn explains. Beiser says, “He was so versatile, and he was always exploring and evolving as an artist. He never settled for the easy path. And he himself, as a person, was the totality of his art.”

Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar is currently touring in both multimedia and concert versions. full album recording of Maya Beiser with the Ambient Orchestra conducted by Evan Ziporyn will be released on January 10th, 2020 - the 4-year anniversary of Bowie's death.

In 2017, visionary cellist Maya Beiser, and innovative composer/conductor Evan Ziporyn, debuted a blockbuster tribute to the late David Bowie, transforming his final album, Blackstar, into a cello concerto for Maya, backed by the The Ambient Orchestra. Following the acclaim of that performance at MIT Kresge Auditorium, they set up to tour the work and have performed Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar around the world. The following year, Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix Music, the makers of the hit videogames Rock Band and Guitar Hero,commissioned the art collective Secret Portal,a Boston-based group exploring the use of immersive technologies in public spaces,to create a special visual presentation of the show known as Aura Blackstar: Bowie Cello Symphonic Visualized. The show debuted at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in February 2019.The album Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar, recorded at the museum the following day, is to be released worldwide by Islandia Music Records on January 10th 2020, the 4th anniversary of David Bowie’s death.

Aura Blackstar: Bowie Cello Symphonic Visualized is an immersive “mixed reality” experience created especially for Maya Beiser’s performance of Blackstar. It is a series of animated vignettes, one for each of the Blackstar album’s seven songs. Evocative computer-generated imagery is projected both onto the floor of the stage, and onto the face of Maya’s cello itself. These animations serve first as an entrancing visualization of the music, dynamically transformed by the sound from the live cello and the orchestral prerecorded tracks. The imagery also integrates the songs’ lyrics, which would otherwise be absent as Bowie’s vocal lines are given to Maya Beiser’s cello. Thematically, all seven of the scenes orbit a prominent “black star” on the stage, an anchoring element that is meant to represent Bowie himself, as well as the void that was left by his departure.

To enable projection of imagery onto the face of the cello—which moves as Maya performs—new technology had to be created for this show. The system involves VR spatial sensors for tracking the position and orientation of the cello, combined with a software projection mapping system that “sticks” the video stably to the face of the cello, even as it moves, to magical effect.

Maya Beiser, cello
Ambient Orchestra
Evan Ziporyn, concept and arranger

Maya Beiser
Describing renowned 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, experimenting with various musical styles, 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 in the Galilee Mountains in Israel, 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. At the age of 12, she was discovered by the late violinist Isaac Stern who became her mentor throughout her early career. Reinventing solo cello performance in the mainstream arena, Maya is a featured performer on the world’s most prestigious stages including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, London’s Southbank Centre, Royal Albert Hall and the Barbican, the Sydney Opera House, the Beijing Festival, Barcelona’s L’Auditori, Paris’ Cité de la Musique, and Stockholm’s Concert Hall. 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 Mazolli, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn, Pontus Lidberg, Wendy Whelan, Lucinda Childs, and Joe Hisaishi.

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 recent season highlights include featured solo performances at the Barbican’s Sound Unbound and Kings Place’s Cello Unwrapped festivals in London, Cello Biennale in Amsterdam, Festival MANN in Naples, Italy and Strings for Autumn Festival in Prague; two new concerto premieres, Mohammed Fairouz’s cello concerto with the Detroit Symphony and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Maya with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra; Bowie Symphonic: Blackstar, a collaboration with Evan Ziporyn that reimagines David Bowie’s complete final album as a cello concerto, with performances in Boston, Barcelona, New York’s Central Park SummerStage, and a 2018 U.S. tour; Spinning, a new collaboration with composer Julia Wolfe and visual artist Laurie Olinder, commissioned and premiered by Peak Performances at Montclair State University; her debut solo performance at the BBC Proms; and premiere performances of a cello concerto by the celebrated Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi at Carnegie Hall and in Tokyo, Japan. Maya is currently at work on THE DAY, a music-dance collaboration with dancer Wendy Whelan choreographed by Lucinda Childs with music by David Lang, premiering at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in August 2019.

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 Paris, Amsterdam, Torino, Milano, Tokyo, Taipei, Athens, Mexico City, Havana, Bogota and Adelaide. She has appeared with many of the world’s top orchestras performing new works for the cello including the Detroit Symphony, Montreal Symphony, BBC Concert Orchestra, Boston Pops, Sydney Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Nashville Symphony, China Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, Barcelona Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, among many others.

Maya’s vast discography includes eleven solo albums. Her recent albums TranceClassical (2016), Maya Beiser: Uncovered (2014) and Provenance (2012), topped the classical music charts. In 2018 she released the day, a collaboration with the composer David Lang. She is the featured soloist on many 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 Lang’s world to come IV has been featured on the soundtrack for Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar winning film, La Grande Bellezza.

Maya Beiser is a 2015 United States Artists (USA) Distinguished Fellow in Music; a 2017 Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology; and was recently a Presenting Artist at the inaugural CultureSummit, held in 2017 in Abu Dhabi. Invited to present at the prestigious TED main stage in Long Beach, CA, Maya’s 2011 TED Talk has been watched by over one million people and translated to 32 languages. 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 and a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Booklet for Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar