The Rhythm Method with Anaïs Maviel
The four virtuosic and inventive composer-performers of The Rhythm Method strive to reimagine the string quartet in a contemporary, feminist context. Their continually expanding practice encompasses improvisation, vocalization, graphic notation, songwriting, and theater. The quartet has performed across the country and abroad, at venues including Roulette, the MIT Museum, Joe’s Pub, The Stone, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morris Museum, and the Noguchi Museum, and have been featured artists at the Lucerne Festival Forward, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn’s String Theories Festival, MATA Festival, Music Mondays, TriBeCa New Music, and the Austrian Cultural Forum’s Moving Sounds Festival.
Marina Kifferstein, violin
Leah Asher, violin
Carrie Frey, viola
Meaghan Burke, cello
Anaïs Maviel is a composer, artist, vocalist & multi-instrumentalist dedicated to translating spiritual concepts to sensory experiences, using sound as medicine & alchemy. With traditional and experimental approaches, her works investigate the power of sound to shape reality, and emphasize the relevance of cultural hybridity. She navigates song, choral, instrumental, orchestral music and staging with a strong connection to cosmologies of sound and speech rooted in oral traditions such as mantra and ring shout. She strives to bridge the gaps between genres & to create a diverse, inclusive, yet sacred musical experience. Highlights in her collaborations include Alarm Will Sound, Meredith Monk, Craig Taborn, Meshell Ndegeocello, Chiquita Magic & William Parker. She writes, performs and facilitates collective vocal liberation in New York, throughout the Americas and Europe, in concert halls, museums and public spaces. Both solo albums hOULe & in the garden received international acclaim, and among the abundant press shout outs, Jazz Right Now has called her a “unique aesthetic visionary”. She is an awardee of the 2019 Van Lier Fellowship, 2020 American Composers Forum Create, 2021-2022 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, 2022 NYFA Artists Fellowship, 2023 New Music USA’s Next Jazz Legacy, and a 2023 Herb Alpert Award in Music nominee. Lastly, she holds a masters degree from Paris Diderot University in modern literature, aesthetics and contemporary thought, which led her to write about the stakes of music & utopia in the creolized world. One can read her poetic essays in the form of intimate newsletters she shares sporadically.
Photo by Mariana Meraz