BEISER, Maya / ZIPORYN, Evan: Blackstar - Bowie Cello Symphonic
Soloist:
Beiser, Maya
Orchestra:
Ambient Orchestra
Conductor:
Ziporyn, Evan
Composer:
Bowie, David
Composer:
Bateman, Paul
Composer:
Schneider, Maria
Composer:
Bhamra, Bob
Date of Concert: 2020
Playing Time: 00:45:24
Catalogue Number: IMR007
UPC: 860002653723
David Bowie released Blackstar on his 69th birthday, January 8, 2016, two days before his death. It was his parting gift to the world, a self-eulogy, hinting at the sacred and reveling in the profane. Blackstar is a concept album, but the concept is unnamed, or is the Un-nameable itself: facing death, living in its shadow. There is no clear story line, no single alter ego, no Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane. Instead Bowie inhabits a collection of characters, taking listeners through aspects of their lives, using a myriad set of images - hospital beds, death masks, possession, trance, acts of passion and violence - that evoke Death and Transfiguration.
Evan Ziporyn made Blackstar to honor Bowie and his influence, to immerse listerners in this amazing music, to live inside it and embody it. But also to transform it, in the spirit of Bowie and of the record itself. Even in these instrumental versions, the words and their meaning hover over the music, despite their absence, much like the 'spirit' figure in the first song: gone, but with a trace.
David Bowie's voice was unique and inimitable, his range matched by his stylistic breadth. Over his career, from album to album, but also within a single song, sometimes a single phrase, Bowie would shapeshift while always remaining himself. He could be a brooding rocker one moment and an English music hall star the next; he could start a phrase bel canto and end it like a blues man. He could be a jazz crooner, soul stylist, folk singer, sprech-stimmer, always sounding expressive and authentic. Because his 4-octave vocal range matches the cello almost exactly, Ziporyn knew Blackstar would be a cello concerto, with Maya Beiser as soloist. She transforms the instrument with each performance, whether she's playing Bach, Dvorak, Piazzolla, or Janis Joplin. In Blackstar she is vocalist one moment, lead guitarist the next, she evokes Bowie's spirit while never ceasing to be herself.
