Dennis Polkow

"I like to generate music and be more than merely an interpretative artist," says cellist Maya Beiser, regarding her one-woman multimedia show, "World to Come," that she presents at Ravinia, August 2.

Beiser has commissioned all of the pieces that she will perform on the program herself, and all were composed with her in mind. "All of the composers are good friends of mine," says Beiser, "and the works all came about organically." Included in the program are Arvo Pärt's "Fratres," Osvaldo Golijov's "Mariel," Chinary Ung's "Khse Boun," Steve Reich's "Cello Counterpoint," Louis Adnriessen's "La Voce" and David Lang's "World to Come."

Lang's "World to Come," for instance, has Beiser immersed in abstract film and video images having to do with water. "There is no story in a narrative sense," says Beiser. "The images are used to create an environment generated by the music itself. This is not a case where the music was composed first and we thought, `Gee, let's put some pretty images of flowers to accompany it.' The works were conceived--image and sound--as an organic unity for the listener to be completely immersed in."

Most of the pieces have Beiser playing live to layers of her own prerecorded tracks that will be given a careful mix, she promises, taking into account the natural, warmth of the cello. For classical music purists who might object to Beiser's true tone being lost in a sea of amplification, she balks.

"That strikes me as an archaic view," she says. "We have all of this wonderful technology now in the twenty-first century, why not use it? If I were playing the Bach Cello Suites live, of course, I would not amplify the cello. That music does not call for that and it would not be appropriate. But these composers specifically ask for amplified cello, and that is needed for a proper mix. I travel with my own sound guy who really knows what he is doing. What we do is very respectful of the cello sound. There are times when I want to have the cello amplified loudly and have its sound transformed, almost in a Jimi Hendrix manner. But none of this music calls for that."

Nor would it be appropriate for Beiser to be performing, say, Bach Cello Suites with nature images, the way Yo-Yo Ma did some years ago. "This isn't like taking a Beethoven symphony and having a screen behind you with decorative images to distract you that may or may not have anything to do with the music," Beiser explains. "Classical music is so bankrupt right now that people are coming up with anything as a quick fix to get people more interested. This is not a gimmick for me; this is who I am."

There has always been a bit of a rebel in Beiser, who grew up in a "left-leaning, peace-hoping" kibbutz in Israel largely made up of Argentine Jews. "My mother was French," she says, "so we were a bit on the outside."

Beiser's father was always playing Pablo Casals records, and she "fell in love with the cello sound as a child," she says. "When they wanted to get me a violin, I wanted a cello, which was bigger than I was at the time."

A child prodigy with perfect pitch "and all of that stuff," who seemed destined to be a classical cello soloist or a member of a cello section in a major symphony orchestra--"the only options in those days for a cellist," Beiser reminds us--Beisier had a passion for Brian Eno and Led Zepplin as much as for Bach or Brahms. Beisier also regularly frequented a nearby Arabic village where she was "intoxicated with the sounds of music coming from mosques and with Middle Eastern music in general."

"It was a schizophrenic existence," Beiser recalls, "because I could never actually perform any of that music, at least in public. A moment of truth came when I was going to solo with the Israel Philharmonic and wanted to wear leather pants. Of course, that was taboo."

After coming to the States, graduating from Yale and studying with Aldo Parisot, Uzi Wiesel, Alexander Schneider and Isaac Stern, Beiser began to explore ways in which she could liberate her performances by making them more accessible to audiences.

"The classical music world was a bit stiff for me," says Beiser, "so I would try to do things to make the audience more involved. At a concert at an art gallery in Soho, we provided mattresses for the audience to make them more comfortable."

And though there will be no mattresses set up at Ravinia, Beiser does promise that the environment will be as "inviting and accessible as the music itself."

In addition to an elaborate light set and a video environment designed by Irit Batsy that Beiser's own crew will supply and set up, Beiser says that everything has been conceived to enhance the experience of hearing the music itself.

And though Beiser herself no longer laments about not being able to perform wearing leather pants, she assures that her appearance is still a far cry from traditional classical concert attire.

Maya Beiser performs her one-woman multimedia show, "World to Come," August 2 in the Martin Theatre at the Ravinia Festival, Lake-Cook and Green Bay Roads, Highland Park, (847)266-5100.

(2005-07-26)

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