Soundlines: On Language and the Land

Out December 1, 2023

pre-order/pre-save the album here

Soundlines: On Language and the Land is the second album of Weather Systems, a three-volume recording by the “‘Philosopher King’ of Percussion” (New York Times), Steven Schick. This album captures the 700-mile journey of the noted percussionist as he searched for language, rooted in the sounds of the animate earth, that could bind the disparate experiences of a 21st-century musician into a unified experience. Through a highly contrasted collage of music, language, and sound effects, Schick presents layered emotions in which a humorous façade dissolves to reveal deeper truths connecting music and life.

Maya Beiser: InfInIte Bach

Listen to the Album

In InfInIte Bach, the avant-garde cellist Maya Beiser elevates our sensory perception of the solo cello Suites of J. S. Bach in the expanded realm of spatial audio. Anchoring her body and instrument in the studio space, she reimagines this seminal Baroque work in a visceral experience that is both immersive and transcendental. The multilayered sounds of our spatial world emerge as ethereal and illuminated, like ambient lights and shadows tempering the overwhelming force of tradition.

“If anyone would give serious thought to what they had to say in recording a work like Bach’s Cello Suites, it would be Maya Beiser…

…the outside noise shuts off and the overtones and reverberations of Beiser’s barn form a space to listen. In the familiar opening movement of the first Suite, Beiser’s warm, companionable tone grabs you like a family member meeting you at an airport arrivals hall, mirroring the ability of Bach’s music to point to some place specific on the map of your emotional landscape and say with red-arrow confidence, ‘You are here’.”

~ Van Magazine

“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.”

~ The New York Times

“Rockstar glam and personal magnetism. Endlessly inventive and a joy to listen to”

~ San Francisco Classical Voice

“Cellist Maya Beiser finds no boundaries in music. In her TED talk, she recalls the intermingling of J.S. Bach’s cello suites and the chanting of Muslim prayers from an Arab village near the Kibbutz in Israel where she grew up. She’s equally comfortable navigating brand-new commissions from today’s top composers or looping her cello into a wall of sound in rock standards by Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.”

~ NPR

Steven Schick: A Hard Rain

Weather Systems, the new multi-album series from “supreme living virtuoso” (The New Yorker) percussionist Steven Schick, is a set of recordings of the percussion music that has been most meaningful to Schick, which will span more than 100 years and feature a diverse set of composers. Weather Systems I: A Hard Rain includes foundational modernist works for solo percussion by John Cage (27’10.554”), Karlheinz Stockhausen (Zyklus), Morton Feldman (The King of Denmark), Charles Wuorinen (Janissary Music), Helmut Lachenmann (Intérieur I), William Hibbard (Parsons’ Piece), and Kurt Schwitters (Ursonata) with Shakrokh Yadegari, electronics composer and performer. The 2-CD set includes an extensive personal essay written by Schick.

Percussionist, conductor, and author Steven Schick has championed contemporary percussion music by commissioning or premiering more than one hundred-fifty new works. The most important of these have become core repertory for solo percussion. The title of his series, Weather Systems, and the first album, A Hard Rain, reflect Schick’s background growing up in a farming family in Iowa, always having one eye on the weather and in particular, on the rain. In his liner notes, he describes the way a deluge can lead to rebirth and relates that to his experience of the pandemic. “As I once learned to value erosion – the earth’s way of forgetting and cleansing – I am grateful that many of the trails I tramped habitually in a life-time of professional concert-giving have been washed away,” he writes.

Evan Ziporyn: Pop Channel

With POP CHANNEL, award-winning clarinetist and composer Evan Ziporyn does the impossible, taking us on a wild ride through iconic pop songs spanning 5 decades, all reimagined through his clarinet, or rather a compendium of clarinets – arranged, layered, and performed by Ziporyn. Pop Channel takes us through sonic landscapes from 45 years of pop music history.

Beginning with a tour-de-force reimagining of Paul McCartney’s psychedelic “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,” Ziporyn progresses through a dizzying range of repertoire, from one-hit wonders (“Ride Captain Ride”) and iconic funk masterpieces (“Shining Star,” “Strawberry Letter #23”), to introspective meditations (Joni Mitchell’s solo version of “Woodstock”) and hidden B-side gems (Steely Dan’s “Your Gold Teeth 2”).

At the epicenter of Pop Channel is a fierce, virtuosic solo bass clarinet rendition of Jimi Hendrix’ incendiary live “Woodstock Improvisation,” with Ziporyn channeling Hendrix’ electric, blues-based expressivity through a unique combination of his extended techniques on the instrument and ferocious guitar distortion effects.

Charting new territories with Pop Channel, Ziporyn crates an exhilarating – and often mind-blowing – sonic celebration of some of the most iconic songs of the past fifty years.

Maya Beiser x Philip Glass

In her fourteenth album, Maya creates a multi-layered cello sound sculpture, unveiling new dimensions in some of Philip Glass’s most powerful and achingly beautiful works.

In “Maya Beiser x Philip Glass,” cellist, arranger, and producer Maya Beiser creates a multi-layered sound sculpture with her cello, unveiling new dimensions in some of Philip Glass’s most powerful and achingly beautiful works In 2005 Philip Glass invitedMaya to performthe solo cello part to his “Naqoyqatsi” score on aworldwide tour of the Qatsi trilogy. They performed together, with the PhilipGlass ensemble, in many of the world’s greatest venues, including the Sydney Opera House, the World Expo in Nagoya, an ancient Romanamphitheater in France, and a Greek amphitheaterin Barcelona. The seeds for this album were planted during that time.

Maya says: “In making this album, I searched for layers of sound that might reveal something new about Glass’s ingenious creative power. I was thinking about stratum, the layering that occurs in most sedimentary rocks formed at the Earth’s surface. I imagined the layers of my cello becoming porous and Glass’s music flowing vociferously through each layer, like lava, endlessly creating new patterns, expanding into the landscape.”

Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar

On January 8, 2016, his 69th birthday, David Bowie released “Blackstar”. He died two days later on January 10th. “Blackstar” was Bowie’s parting gift to the world, a self-eulogy, hinting at the sacred and reveling in the profane. Blackstar is a concept album, but the concept is unnamed, or is the Un-nameable itself: facing death, living in its shadow.

In this new album “Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar”, visionary cellist Maya Beiser and composer/conductor Evan Ziporyn honor Bowie and his influence. Immersing themselves in this astounding music, living inside it, embodying it. Bowie’s 4-octave vocal range matches the cello almost exactly, making it the perfect protagonist instrument. Beiser and Ziporyn re-create the entire album as a cello concerto, arranged by Ziporyn for Beiser as soloist.

Accompanied by the Ambient Orchestra, Maya Beiser transforms her cello; A vocalist one moment, a lead guitarist the next, she evokes David Bowie’s spirit while never ceasing to be herself. Even in these instrumental versions, the words and their meaning hover over the music, despite their absence, much like the ‘spirit’ figure in the first song: gone, but with a trace.