Review: Maya Beiser’s ‘Salt’ Explores the Impossible Cost of Remembering

By Greg Cahill | From the September/October 2025 issue of Strings

Cellist and composer Maya Beiser bills Salt as “a profound musical meditation on memory, reflection, and women’s voices across time.” This evocative recording is grounded in the ancient biblical tale of Lot’s wife, whom the Old Testament God turned into a pillar of salt for turning back to look at the destruction of the corrupt cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The album, Beiser notes, explores themes of memory, witness, and the cost of remembering.

“There’s a moment in the story of Lot’s wife that has haunted me for years,” she writes in the liner notes. “It’s not the turning to salt—it’s the turning to look. That instinctual, human act of looking back at what you love, even as it’s being destroyed. That moment holds everything: memory, defiance, tenderness—and the impossible cost of remembering.” 

That heady theme, and the fate of Lot’s unnamed wife, also is the foundation of Beiser’s 2012 cello opera Elsewhere. But the heart of the new album is American composer Missy Mazzoli’s Salt, a mini-opera for alto voice, amplified cello, and electronics, and featuring a libretto by screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (known for such feminist-themed films as Secretary and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus) with vocals by singer and actress Helga Davis (Einstein on the Beach). The 12 tracks also include reimagined, sometimes bittersweet, laments and meditations by John Tavener, Meredith Monk, C.W. Gluck, Clarice Jensen (whose expansive soundscape Salt Air, Salt Earth also was inspired by the tale of Lot’s wife), Claudio Monteverdi, Y. Admon, and Henry Purcell. Beiser’s interpretation of the traditional Hebrew prayer Shedemati, featuring American composer and experimental vocalist Odeya Nini, also dwells on themes of loss. But Beiser’s haunting interpretation of British composer Tavener’s Lament to Phaedra (for solo cello), with droning passages drenched in reverb, a longtime part of Beiser’s concert repertoire, really stands out (she also had recorded it in 2002 on her World to Come album).

The result is an extraordinary album that reinforces Beiser’s status as one of the most innovative—and intriguing—string players on the contemporary music scene.