World To Come

“Classical music is often accused, rightly, of being too comfortable in its Luddism, too primly cautious in its relation to technology. It is so fixated on what individual performers create in the moment that it tends to regard almost anything created outside the bounds of traditional performance with suspicion.

Yet the intrepid Israeli-born cellist Maya Beiser upended this notion in the first piece of her Friday performance at the beautifully restored Paramount Theatre. She was playing an arrangement of Arvo Pärt’s meditative “Fratres’’ for solo cello and four prerecorded multitrack cellos. As the stage slowly transitioned from darkness to light, it was impossible to tell what sounds were being produced live and which had been created in her studio. I suspect that Beiser’s point, beautifully made in “Fratres’’ as well as in the rest of her concert, is that it doesn’t matter. What matters is the sound itself.” - David Weininger, Boston Globe, March 26, 2010

Evocative, theatrical and spiritual, World To Come is Maya Beiser's multimedia solo concert, featuring premieres by Steve Reich, Osvaldo Golijov and David Lang. This evening challenges the notion of a solo cello concert and encompasses text, vocals, dramatic lighting and interactive videos. World To Come had its world premiere at the Krannert Center on October 18th, 2003, and its New York premiere as part of the inaugural season of Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on October 30th, 2003, followed by a major national and international tour.