delugEON CD-Signed

The concept for delugEON, Maya Beiser's latest solo album, began with arctic icebergs and the dark rhythms created by the sound of their near-continuous melting. As she listened to these sounds, Maya imagined the layers of her singing cello, being permeated by the sounds of a vanishing natural world. In slow seasons she juxtaposed multi-cello layers of each of the slow movements from Vivaldi's four seasons with sounds of melting icebergs (winter), desert dunes (summer), oceanic winds (autumn), and the winds on Mars - as recorded by NASA (spring). 

Recorded during a period of 7 days in Hudson Hall, New York, delugEON breaks away from the sterile studio environment, utilizing numerous sets of microphones situated in various positions throughout space. This concept allowed for various facets of the natural acoustics to suffuse the sound of Maya's cello with a reverberant, ethereal voice. The entire album was recorded without the use of any artificial or digital sound manipulation. 

delugEON is music that is elegiac but not hopeless. The heart of the album is in fact the heart itself: Maya's actual heartbeat, recorded as a pulsating drumbeat to the music of Beethoven. And as we hear the sounds of Maya's breathing emerging within the layers of her soaring multi-cello recreation of Oliver Messiaens's water, we are reminded that in ancient Greek the word psyche means "the breath of life," and is synonymous with the soul. And we understand that this music is not a requiem for the human race in one of its darkest periods, but proof of an inextinguishable human spirit. And, if our path sometimes seems dark, don't despair; this is music to help light the way.