Ever since Maria discovered David Bowie as a teenager, she has loved his music as much as YoYo Ma's. To bring her long-time dream of making an album of solo cello renditions of Bowie’s songs to fruition, Maria teamed up with BeLikeWater Productions and called on her colleague, Swiss composer Mark Baechle, who has worked on numerous Hollywood film scores, to translate her love for Bowie to the cello. He created multi-cello, symphonic-like textures and arrangements (except Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide, which is a cello solo). And for the cover, Maria collaborated with a world-renowned Belgian designer Christian Loos (among numerous other awards, his work was chosen as one of the 20 Most Genius Advertising Campaigns Ever by La Repubblica). The cover photograph is by a French-Lebanese fashion photographer Thierry van Biesen.
Space Oddity was arranged for the Ahn Trio by Kenji Bunch a decade ago, and Maria invited her sisters Lucia & Angella to record the piano trio version on this album. Maria says she had to include Space Oddity, because it was one of the first Bowie songs she fell in love with, and she couldn’t resist recording one track with her sisters.
Inspiration
Maria says, “the inspiration for this EP comes from many elements & artists, among them are; of course, David Bowie the true rockstar chameleon, Seu Jorge's Bowie covers sung in Portugese, Symphony No. 4 "Heroes" by Philip Glass, the Aphex Twin's Heroes Remix, my dear colleague superdrive aka Juno, and Axel Ruhland who was the first to get excited by the idea of my trio playing Bowie years a go and New York City where I live. It would take too long to describe the entire evolution of this project. Mark Baechle and I explored what these songs would sound like just with cello - very bare - and took our liberties with textures and forms, all the while letting the songs guide us. There are no electronic or artificial sounds added.