Whenever cellist and vocalist Maya Fridman releases a new album, I celebrate. Or perhaps it's a happy dance. Either way, I head off to download the album and spend some time listening. And I'm never disappointed. Maya's musicianship is superb, both as a cellist and as a vocalist. But it is probably her sensibilities about outstanding music that needs to be performed and heard that most attracts me.
Maya Fridman, Ordo Ritualis (White Edition, Black Edition). TRPTK 2025 (DXD 32-bit, DSD256) HERE and HERE
In Ordo Ritualis, Maya presents compositions by six modern composers who are writing music today. All of the compositions come from within the last twenty-five years, some within the past five.
One fascinating track is Martijn Padding's Give Me One More Night (1998, arranged for voice 2024). Padding composed this originally for the Dutch-American cellist Frances-Marie Uitti. She had developed a unique technique by using two bows in one hand (one above and one below the strings) to play all four strings of the cello simultaneously. With the two bows, the composition works on flageolet harmonies—artificial harmonics produced by lightly touching a string at a specific point (a nodal point) while the string is vibrating, causing a higher partial (harmonic) to be heard instead of the fundamental pitch. Maya doesn't play the work with two bows. Instead, she has re-imagined it with one bow and then singing the missing notes. Collaborating with Martijn Padding on this new version, it is now a duet of voice and cello: taking the the resonance of natural flageolets and aligning them with her voice. She writes that this "transformed this piece for me into a kind of meditative ritual of listening to what hides in the spaces between the notes, between inhaling and exhaling my breath." Just great stuff.
And then there is Missy Mazzoli's Vespers for Cello, in which poems by Matthew Zapruder replace the customary sacred text. Multiple voices sing the text of the poems (deep in the mix), with solo cello out front and tiny chimes heard deep in the background. Presumably the voices are mixed into the track in post-production, and the chimes electronically introduced. But Maya accomplishes this skillfully and with taste—all very subtle and proportionate.
Maya tells us that "Bryce Dessner's Tuusula reflects the contrasting moods of a Finnish lakeside town—its peaceful serenity and sudden bursts of energy—echoing the cycles and rituals of nature itself." Intriguingly, he composed it for cellist Nicolas Altstaedt over the course of a chamber music festival. "He would write a bit of the piece every day, which accounts for its improvisatory feeling. At the end of the week, Nicolas premiered it in the lakeside chapel where Sibelius was baptized." It is a stunningly good work for solo cello into which I became completely immersed.
Composer Fjóla Evans and Maya collaborated on Maya's 2019 album REIÐ, about which you can read more HERE. In Vatnaskuggi—meeting your water shadow, Fjóla composes a unique work for Maya to perform on this album. In Fjóla's words, the music tells of "an imagined seaside ritual that brings our protagonist face-to-face with aspects of her own self that she would rather leave simmering under the surface, submerged under the crashing waves." The music, with its sound of tumbled stones and rhythmic waves, haunts while raising questions. One almost wishes to raise a hand in defense as the tension builds. Well done!
Kaveh Vares' Egidius is a lament filled with emotions of loss, pain and longing. It is based on a poem written during the 14th century for the death of a friend. Along with her solo cello, Maya sings "Egidius, where art thou gone? I yearn for thee, my gentle friend. Thou chose the grave, and left me lone." (English translation) The work is a powerful expression of longing as performed here.
Heather Pinkham's Days Blur was composed for Maya during the early pandemic in April 2020. Maya says, "She writes that the lyrics captured her feelings at the time, reflecting the range of emotions she experienced: hopelessness, anger, acceptance, and sadness." This emotional roller coaster is mirrored in the sudden shifts in the music, evoking the disorienting and turbulent nature of the time. This piece is also the subject of an ambient meditative remix in the final track of the White Album. Maya explained in an Instagram post that the remix features actual field recordings of a forest during the morning, afternoon, and night.
About this album, Maya writes, "In my life, there are rituals I read about in books, learned from someone, and created on my own. But there are also rituals in sound, sonic worlds that tell a story—about our time, about loss, about encounters with the unknown. This album, Ordo Ritualis, is a small collection of these rituals..."
However, you may have noted from the headline of this article that there are two separate albums released: a Black Edition and White Edition.
I've been trying to figure out why. So far I haven't cracked the code, and Maya doesn't explain in the liner notes. The music is the same on both editions. It's just the track sequence that is different between the albums, they are inverted. But, the seventh track is completely different from one edition to the other. In both editions, this seventh track is a Madiel Remix of one of the earlier tracks, but each edition remixes a different track. To make a guess, and it is only a guess, this is about "ritual." Rituals have a sequence, a pattern. Between the two editions, that sequence is different. And playing the music straight through gives a different impression and different reaction to each album as a whole. (Yes, I've done this for each album.) Which sequencing do I prefer, White or Black? I don't know. They are indeed different when played straight through from one direction and then from the other. All of this is why I prefer listening to complete albums, not mish-mashed bleeding chunks cut out of albums. (I hate track "playlists.") I'm a believer in the notion that an artist organized the album a given way for a purpose. The tracks sequence is part of the art. If I can find a comment from Maya casting more light on this, I'll share it in an update.
Recording sessions begin in 2021 in the magnificent Grote Kerk in Almelo, Netherlands.
Other albums by or with this remarkable artist, Maya Fridman, are listed in this NativeDSD search link. Here are some I've particularly enjoyed and written about elsewhere in Positive Feedback.
Maya Fridman performing at the Ordo Ritualiis White Edition release event in the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, 22 March 2025, at which both composers Heather Pinkham and Kaveh Vares attended. At the 23 March 2025 release event for the Black Edition, composer Martijn Padding was able to attend.
