Maya Beiser - Provenance (2010)

Cellist Maya Beiser’s latest CD for the Innova imprint seeks to craft music that celebrates the rich multiculturalism of the Iberian peninsula. Using medieval Spain as a jumping off point, Beiser has commissioned a collection of works that celebrate Christian, Jewish, and Muslim musical traditions. The participants frequently interweave stylistic and ethnic boundaries. The results are frequently engaging musical hybrids.

Provenance is a tribute to what Beiser describes as the Golden age of Spain, the 9th to the 15th centuries, when the peaceful coexistence of Islam, Jewish, and Christian cultures engendered an especially rich musical tradition. The album includes four works written for Beiser, several of them scored for cello and a variety of traditional instruments as well as voice...The works create an aura of exoticism (in the use of modes and folk instruments associated with the Near and Middle East), have a solo line that sounds freely improvisatory, and a tone that is most often passionately melancholy...Innova's immaculate, vibrant sound is impressively present. The CD should be of interest to fans of virtuoso cello playing, new music, and the fusion of Western classical and world music traditions.


Sometimes, a concept album contains a creative inspiration that is far better than the reality it imagines. In my view, Provenance extolls a wonderful collaborative atmosphere: a model for many future cross-cultural projects. Alas, this type of music-making is a relatively recent innovation and, in many venues, is still far from prevalent. One wishes Maya Beiser were able to make multicultural music without extolling the virtues of dhimmi under Muslim rule. During the Middle Ages, dhimmi – “people of the book” (Christians and Jews) – were sporadically allowed limited religious freedom in Iberia. But there were significant legal and cultural restrictions placed upon non-Muslim citizens; these were terms of surrender, not of collaboration or accommodation. Thus, my reading of history doesn’t allow me to share Beiser’s utopian view of medieval multiculturalism. I’d rather listen to Provenance as a hopeful and tantalizing glimpse at what music-making and, indeed, cultural coexistence, may increasingly look like in the future than to revise or rewrite our spotty attempts at getting along in the past.


Tracklist:

Kayhan Kalhor - I Was There, for cello, oud & percussion 15:36
Djivan Gasparian - Memories, for cello 7:01
Tamar Muskal - Mar De Leche, for voice, cello, oud & percussion 14:41
Douglas J. Cuomo - Only Breath, for cello 10:07
Jimmy Page & Robert Plant, arr. Evan Ziporyn - Kashmir 7:17



Read more about Maya Beiser here.
Read more about Project Provenance here.

3% recovery record included

Of related interest:
Duo Jalal - A Different World (2011) Link

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