Artist:
Maya Beiser
Genre:
Classical
Total Time:
78:26
Record Label:
Islandia Music
Purchase Album (click links):
MP3,
Apple Music, Spotify
Release Date
August 1, 2025
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Find out more about this album release after the jump.
Maya Beiser
Genre:
Classical
Total Time:
78:26
Record Label:
Islandia Music
Purchase Album (click links):
MP3,
Apple Music, Spotify
Release Date
August 1, 2025
"The Entertainment Factor is supported by its audience. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission."
Find out more about this album release after the jump.
Product Description: On August 1, 2025, cellist and producer Maya Beiser, hailed as a “force of nature” by The Boston Globe, will release her newest solo album, Salt, on her Islandia Music Records label. This conceptually rich collection centers around the biblical figure of Lot's Wife, exploring themes of memory, witness, and the cost of remembering.
“There's a moment in the story of Lot's Wife that has haunted me for years,” says Maya Beiser. “It's not the turning to salt—it's the turning to look. That instinctual, human act of looking back at what you love, even as it's being destroyed. That moment holds everything: memory, defiance, tenderness—and the impossible cost of remembering.”
The new album emerges from Maya’s ongoing artistic engagement with the figure of Lot’s Wife, whom she first explored in her 2012 “cello opera,” Elsewhere. In it, Maya offers a powerful reinterpretation of this ancient story: “She disobeyed not out of rebellion, but out of memory. She preferred the pain of looking back to the emptiness of blind escape. She chose the past— its beauty, its ruin, its truth—over the safety of an unknown future. And for that, she was turned to salt,” she says. “I've always seen that pillar not as punishment, but as a monument.”
On her new album, Maya gives voice to this nameless biblical figure who, for her, became “a symbol of all the women who have been punished for remembering, for feeling too much, for refusing to move on. I imagined her not as a cautionary tale, but as a witness. A woman who couldn’t unsee what she had loved. A woman who dared to turn around.”
At the album's core is Missy Mazzoli's Salt, a powerful mini-opera for alto voice, amplified cello and electronics, featuring text by celebrated screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson and vocals by the extraordinary performer Helga Davis. Maya describes the work as, “a conversation across time: Lot's Wife speaking from her 'salted jail' to the future.” She adds, “Playing this piece feels like uncovering a fossilized voice—fragile, ancient, and ferociously present.”
The album weaves together works that meditate on these central themes of remembrance, resistance, and reflection, including Maya’s arrangements of Gluck’s Melody from Orfeo ed Euridice, Tavener's Lament to Phaedra and Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna, which she approaches as musical explorations of mythic women condemned for their profound longing.
Clarice Jensen’s Salt Air, Salt Earth conjures a sonic landscape that seems to evoke geological time. Maya describes the piece as, “playing through sediment—layers of ancient sound and sensation, buried but not gone.” Jensen has said she was inspired both by the story of Lot’s Wife and the ancient ritual of “salting the earth” of a conquered city.
Maya’s reimagining of Meredith Monk's Hocket examines memory and fragmentation—of two voices within one instrument. Her reconstruction of Shedemati, a song from her childhood in Israel, is performed with the compelling vocal artist Odeya Nini. She says of the piece, which she has known for most of her life, “I felt the bittersweet pull of land, loss, and identity. My ancestors sang it as pioneers; I now play it as a mourner.”
The album concludes with Purcell's When I Am Laid in Earth, which Maya calls, “not just an ending—but a laying to rest.”
“In January 2025, we were deep in the making of this album as fires raged across Los Angeles, war tore through the Middle East, and political discourse in the U.S. grew ever more ominous,” Maya adds. “In this moment, Salt feels uncannily timely.”
“There's a moment in the story of Lot's Wife that has haunted me for years,” says Maya Beiser. “It's not the turning to salt—it's the turning to look. That instinctual, human act of looking back at what you love, even as it's being destroyed. That moment holds everything: memory, defiance, tenderness—and the impossible cost of remembering.”
The new album emerges from Maya’s ongoing artistic engagement with the figure of Lot’s Wife, whom she first explored in her 2012 “cello opera,” Elsewhere. In it, Maya offers a powerful reinterpretation of this ancient story: “She disobeyed not out of rebellion, but out of memory. She preferred the pain of looking back to the emptiness of blind escape. She chose the past— its beauty, its ruin, its truth—over the safety of an unknown future. And for that, she was turned to salt,” she says. “I've always seen that pillar not as punishment, but as a monument.”
On her new album, Maya gives voice to this nameless biblical figure who, for her, became “a symbol of all the women who have been punished for remembering, for feeling too much, for refusing to move on. I imagined her not as a cautionary tale, but as a witness. A woman who couldn’t unsee what she had loved. A woman who dared to turn around.”
At the album's core is Missy Mazzoli's Salt, a powerful mini-opera for alto voice, amplified cello and electronics, featuring text by celebrated screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson and vocals by the extraordinary performer Helga Davis. Maya describes the work as, “a conversation across time: Lot's Wife speaking from her 'salted jail' to the future.” She adds, “Playing this piece feels like uncovering a fossilized voice—fragile, ancient, and ferociously present.”
The album weaves together works that meditate on these central themes of remembrance, resistance, and reflection, including Maya’s arrangements of Gluck’s Melody from Orfeo ed Euridice, Tavener's Lament to Phaedra and Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna, which she approaches as musical explorations of mythic women condemned for their profound longing.
Clarice Jensen’s Salt Air, Salt Earth conjures a sonic landscape that seems to evoke geological time. Maya describes the piece as, “playing through sediment—layers of ancient sound and sensation, buried but not gone.” Jensen has said she was inspired both by the story of Lot’s Wife and the ancient ritual of “salting the earth” of a conquered city.
Maya’s reimagining of Meredith Monk's Hocket examines memory and fragmentation—of two voices within one instrument. Her reconstruction of Shedemati, a song from her childhood in Israel, is performed with the compelling vocal artist Odeya Nini. She says of the piece, which she has known for most of her life, “I felt the bittersweet pull of land, loss, and identity. My ancestors sang it as pioneers; I now play it as a mourner.”
The album concludes with Purcell's When I Am Laid in Earth, which Maya calls, “not just an ending—but a laying to rest.”
“In January 2025, we were deep in the making of this album as fires raged across Los Angeles, war tore through the Middle East, and political discourse in the U.S. grew ever more ominous,” Maya adds. “In this moment, Salt feels uncannily timely.”
TRACK LIST:
1 .
Salt: One
Maya Beiser feat. Helga Davis
(03:15)
2 . Salt: Two Maya Beiser feat. Helga Davis (03:13)
3 . Salt: Three Maya Beiser feat. Helga Davis (05:21)
4 . Salt: Four Maya Beiser feat. Helga Davis (07:10)
5 . Salt: Five Maya Beiser feat. Helga Davis (02:38)
6 . Lament for Phaedra (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (14:31)
7 . Facing North: No. 8, Hocket (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (05:55)
8 . Orfeo ed Euridice, Wq. 30: Dance of the Blessed Spirits (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (03:57)
9 . Salt Air, Salt Earth (15:28)
10 . Lamento d'Arianna, SV 22: No. 1, Lasciatemi morire (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (04:55)
11 . Shedemati (Arr. for Voice, Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) Maya Beiser feat. Odeya Nini (05:07)
12 .Dido and Aeneas, Z. 626: When I Am Laid in Earth (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (07:03)
2 . Salt: Two Maya Beiser feat. Helga Davis (03:13)
3 . Salt: Three Maya Beiser feat. Helga Davis (05:21)
4 . Salt: Four Maya Beiser feat. Helga Davis (07:10)
5 . Salt: Five Maya Beiser feat. Helga Davis (02:38)
6 . Lament for Phaedra (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (14:31)
7 . Facing North: No. 8, Hocket (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (05:55)
8 . Orfeo ed Euridice, Wq. 30: Dance of the Blessed Spirits (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (03:57)
9 . Salt Air, Salt Earth (15:28)
10 . Lamento d'Arianna, SV 22: No. 1, Lasciatemi morire (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (04:55)
11 . Shedemati (Arr. for Voice, Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) Maya Beiser feat. Odeya Nini (05:07)
12 .Dido and Aeneas, Z. 626: When I Am Laid in Earth (Arr. for Cello & Electronics by Maya Beiser) (07:03)
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