Cellist Maya Beiser Plays at Bard SummerScape's Spiegeltent Tonight

Dubbed a "cello goddess" by The New Yorker, virtuosic cellist Maya Beiser will perform at Bard College SummerScape's Spiegeltent tonight, August 9 at 8:30pm in a concert entitled The Music of Astor Piazolla and Beyond with special guest pianist Donal Fox. The Bard SummerScape Spiegeltent is an authentic Belgian "mirror tent," constructed of wood and canvas and decorated with mirrors like the traveling entertainment tents popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In Bard's Spigeltent with Donal Fox, Maya will bring to the audience her unique take on the music of Argentinian tango master Astor Piazzolla and the early style of tango - a raw, provocative and sensual sound that developed on the streets of Buenos Aires in the 1920s and '30s. The evening will also include original works, and arrangements by Fox and new works developed by Beiser during her residency at the Spiegeltent.

Of Maya's recent performance with Donal Fox in Boston, noted critic Jon Garelick wrote, "This was music you could hear with your eyes: Beiser looking over her shoulder at Fox, the pianist fixing his eyes on her or the music, as they both presented pieces (or improvisations) that were new to each other. At one coda, Beiser whipped her bow toward the floor with a final downstroke and practically glared at Fox in triumph. Nailed it!"

Maya Beiser has captivated audiences worldwide with her virtuosity, and eclectic repertoire. The Boston Globe declares, "With virtuoso chops, rock-star charisma, and an appetite for pushing her instrument to the edge of avant-garde adventurousness, Maya Beiser is the post-modern diva of the cello." Throughout her adventurous and versatile career she has re-imagined the concert experience, creating new music for the cello, commissioning, and performing many works written for her by today's leading composers.

This summer, Maya travels to France and Italy for two interdisciplinary projects that extend her quest to redefine her instrument's boundaries. In June, she traveled to Paris, France to collaborate on a new film with artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla and composer David Lang, which is centered around the original Venus of Lespugue, an ancient nude female figure from the Upper Paleolithic period. The work was filmed at the Musée de l'Homme, which counts the Venus of Lespugue as one of its most significant artifacts. In Arezzo, Italy, Maya will be a featured guest alongside such luminaries as Yoko Ono, Marina Abramovi?, Isabella Rossellini, and Shirin Neshat at ICASTICA 2013, an international festival celebrating women artists working in all artistic fields (architecture, theatre, dance, and music). She will perform in the Piazza San Domenico on July 16 at 9:30pm.

Maya's new NPR Tiny Desk Concert, featuring a captivating performance of Just Ancient Loops by Michael Harrison and Mariel by Osvaldo Golijov, was released on June 29. (Watch online: http://bit.ly/NPRTinyDeskMaya) In addition, she is a featured soloist on the soundtrack by James Newton Howard for M. Night Shyamalan's science fiction film After Earth, starring Jaden and Will Smith, which is in wide release this summer. Her recording of David Lang's World To Come IV from her album, World To Come, is featured in the Italian film La Grande Bellezza, also in theaters this summer.

Other composers that Maya has collaborated with previously include Tan Dun, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, Steve Reich, David Lang, Louis Andriessen, and Mark O'Connor, among many others. A featured performer on the world's most prestigious stages, she has appeared as soloist at the Sydney Opera House, New York's Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and BAM, London's Barbican, Royal Albert Hall, and South Bank Center, and the World Expo in Nagoya, Japan. In 2011, Maya was invited to present at the exclusive TED conference. Her TEDtalk performance has been watched by close to one million people and translated to 32 languages.

Maya has conceived, performed, and produced her critically acclaimed multimedia concerts, including World To Come, which premiered as part of the inaugural season of Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall; Almost Human, a collaboration with visual artist Shirin Neshat; and Provenance, which forms the basis of her best selling album. Top New York critics have consistently chosen her Carnegie Hall concerts as part of their "Best Of The Year" lists. Maya's latest production, Elsewhere: a CelloOpera, premiered in October 2012 at Carolina Performing Arts followed by a sold-out run at the BAM Next Wave Festival. Elsewhere is an imaginative retelling of the Biblical legend of Lot's wife, created by Maya with director Robert Woodruff.

Highlights of Maya Beiser's recent US tours include performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Royce Hall in Los Angeles, Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, Mondavi Performing Arts Center, Ravinia Festival in Chicago, Celebrity Series in Boston, and International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven. Other recent performances include major venues and festivals in Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Torino, Tokyo, Taipei, Athens, Mexico City, and Bogota. She has appeared with many of the world's top orchestras performing new works for the cello including the St. Paul Camber Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, China Philharmonic, and Shanghai Philharmonic, among many others.

Maya's vast discography, released on the Sony Classical, Nonesuch, Koch (now E1), Innova, and Cantaloupe Music labels, includes five solo albums and many studio recordings and film music collaborations. Her 2010 album Provenance topped the classical and world music charts on both Amazon and iTunes. Collaborating with renowned film composer James Newton Howard, Maya has been the featured soloist on several film soundtracks including M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters, Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond, and Rupert Sanders' Snow White and the Huntsman.

Raised on a kibbutz in the Galilee Mountains in Israel by her French mother and Argentinean father, Maya Beiser is a graduate of Yale University. Her major teachers were Aldo Parisot, Uzi Weizel, Alexander Schneider, and Isaac Stern. Maya was the founding cellist of the new music ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Maya can be found on Twitter, tweeting as @cellogoddess, a moniker bestowed upon her by The New Yorker. For more information, visit www.mayabeiser.com.

About Bard Summerscape and Spiegeltent
Bard College SummerScape 2013 consists of seven inspired weeks of opera, music, theater, dance, film, and cabaret. The hub of these offerings is the 24th annual Bard Music Festival, this year examining the life, work, and cultural milieu of the 20th-century Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. From ballet to chamber works, from sacred music to symphonies, the festival will explore Stravinsky's long and illustrious career, along with many works by his contemporaries. Other highlights of the season include Sergey Taneyev's Oresteia, an opera based on Aeschylus' tragic Greek trilogy; a collaboration by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company celebrating Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring; a theatrical adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita; an adventurous film festival; and the return of cabaret at the Spiegeltent.