CD | SECOND INVERSION

by Jill Kimball

One of classical music’s worst faults is its superiority, all too often on display. Many of those who perform and listen to classical music believe there is nothing more beautiful, more sacred. Some even believe everything else is noise.

Perhaps that’s why cellist Maya Beiser felt guilty and a little dirty after she heard rock music for the first time. As a child growing up in Israel’s Galilee Mountains, she listened to classical music and practiced on her cello diligently. But “the first time I heard Janis Joplin I felt shaken to the core,” she told her recording label, Innova. “Somehow her unique, raw expression snuck its way into the inner shrine where, until then, only the likes of Bach and Schubert were allowed to enter. It felt so sacrilegious that I was giddy with guilt.”

It was that feeling that inspired the cello diva’s latest album, “Uncovered.” It’s ten tracks of beautifully deconstructed classic rock songs, as spectacular a find for die-hard Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd fans as it is for those who know absolutely nothing about classic rock.

Beiser has never shied from experimental music and has in fact made cross-cultural genre-bending her mission. She’s worked with the likes of Philip Glass, Tan Dun, Brian Eno and Steve Reich on new compositions. She’s the founding cellist of New York’s Bang on a Can. Her hometown was a cultural melting pot of Christians, Jews and Muslims, and she was born of a French mother and Argentinian father. With that kind of background, it’s no wonder her music resonates with people all over the world. (Her TED talk has been translated into 32 languages.)

“Uncovered” is another excellent chapter in Beiser’s genre-defying book, proof positive that traditionally classical instruments don’t always have to sound prim and polished. In the Nirvana cover “Lithium,” for example, Beiser’s cello scrapes rudely across the strings to channel Kurt Cobain’s gritty, slightly out of tune singing voice. She bends the notes perfectly to capture Jimi Hendrix’s essence in “Little Wing.” And she does a hell of a good AC/DC electric guitar impression on “Back in Black.”

Channeling, rather than imitation, is really what she’s going for in this album, and thank goodness: straight-up covers are often mocked, panned and condemned for their lack of creativity. The covers that everyone remembers are those that shed completely new light on a song, like Janis Joplin’s bluesy take on the Gershwin classic “Summertime.” That track inspired Beiser’s own cover, where she shreds and wails on the cello to create a melody that so accurately imitates Joplin’s raspy vocals.

Other tracks seek to imitate the mood of the original song rather than the vocal quality, such as the balladic “Wish You were Here,” a Pink Floyd cover, and the mournful “Epitaph,” by King Crimson.

In short, the cello diva has done it again. Without giving up her own originality, cellist Maya Beiser captures every rasp, every scream, every bit of edginess and ugliness…everything that made these rock songs so legendary. “Uncovered” is the ultimate homage to the perfect imperfection of rock music.

by Seth Tompkins

Photo by Christian Steiner

The May 27 Naxos release, Shattered (Physical CD and iTunes download), features music by American composer Margaret Brouwer that traces her individual response to the global events of the first decade of the 21^st century. Reflecting the tone of the world in the 2000s as seen through the eyes of a globally-conscious American, this disc is complete with the sounds of shock, disillusionment, sadness, uncertainty, introspection, realignment, and self-healing that were experienced by so many in recent years. In addition to the adroit performances found here, the liner notes lend additional emotional traction to this intense music.

Musically, the contemporary instrumental works on this release tend toward an effective fusion of traditional and extended techniques. Unlike many such attempts, the music heard here blends the two without the extended materials becoming gimmicky or distracting. In fact, the nuanced and appropriate inclusion of these elements enhances the music, achieving in an arena where musical success is often elusive.

Shattered Glass (for flute, cello, percussion, and piano) is a distinctly painful piece, a fact which becomes quite clear after a reading of this release’s liner notes. The ensemble playing here is tight and thoughtful, with each player coming to the fore and fading into the background at just the right moments. This is 13-minutes of engaging introspection, which, in some ways, is a crystallized expression of the ideas contained in the piece that follows, the quintet for clarinet and strings.

Brouwer’s clarinet quintet is quite complex, using 12-tone techniques and incorporating holy music from both the Christian and Islamic faiths. Also written as a response to recent world events involving the United States and the Middle East, the quintet musically breaks out and explores many of the individual issues that make up the chaotic and seemingly grim world in which it was written.

The song Whom do you call angel now? is a more personal reflection on the world events that inspired the prior pieces, specifically the events of September 11, 2001. The text by David Adams is set simply, but with a healthy measure of Romantic-era touches that place this piece squarely in the art-song tradition.

Lonely Lake, for the Blue Streak Ensemble, is a depiction of a single day at the remote cabin where the composer sensed hope for the future in the face of the troubling events that dominate the tone of much of this release. The imitation loon calls that conclude this piece are particularly engrossing, inviting meditation with the aloof realness of the woods.

Certainly, there is music from the past that bears repeating and reinterpreting. The two arrangements at the end of this collection are examples of such music. Written for the Blue Streak Ensemble while at the cabin on Lonely Lake, Brouwer’s arrangements of Debussy’s Claire de Lune and Bach’s Two-Part Invention in F are fresh reworkings of these two lovely classics. In addition to giving listeners new things for which to listen in the context of familiar favorites, they provide the simple pleasure that is sometimes critical in times that strain individuals’ understanding of the world around them.