The pair first met as children on Israel’s Classical music scene, but it was only when the world came to a standstill in 2020 that they were able to reconnect and make music together. Grounded in listening, improvisation, and emotion. Maya and Uriel took to the studio in an effort to pour life into images, offering their listener the opportunity to pause, join and observe moments created in the room and reflect on the outside.

The record sees the duo explore the timbral capabilities of their instruments, weaving melodies, dense harmony and improvisation together across naturally evolving spontaneity with inclinations towards song-like structures.

From delicate tranquillity with Middle Eastern folk influences, to frantic explorations of tension chaos with a free-jazz edge, each piece is built around an intimate duo performance, developed through the use of overdubs, spacious reverberated cello harmonics, filtered field recordings, synths, and delays.

Internationally recognised for his remarkable blend of classical piano, improvisation and Middle Eastern rhythms, Uriel Herman has captured the hearts of audiences all over the world, with notable performance highlights including at the Forbidden City Concert Hall (Beijing), Ronnie Scott’s, Bimhuis Amsterdam, and leading jazz festivals all over Europe. His last album ‘Different Eyes’ was selected by the Guardian as one of 2023’s top 10 jazz releases.

Maya Belsitzman is a classically educated cellist whose career has seen her perform with internationally acclaimed artists including Avishai Cohen (Trumpet), Barbara Streisand, Ehud Banai and more. In addition to her work as a performing cellist, Belsitzman regularly composes, produces and arranges original scores for theatre, modern dance, short films and documentary movies.

We are releasing this album now in the hope that it will shed a bit of light during this dark period we are experiencing in Israel. – Maya & Uriel

Line up

Maya Belsitzman | Cello
Uriel Herman | Piano

Track Listing

Dew (Tal)
Homage to Chopin
On a Boat
First Step (Nur)
The Naked Streets
Dance of The Blinds
Not Alone
Echo of Regrets
Sandbox
Shades

London, UK — Ubuntu Music proudly announces “Different Eyes,” the highly-anticipated third solo album from Uriel Herman, set for release on June 30th, 2023. Internationally recognised for his remarkable blend of classical piano and Middle Eastern rhythm, Uriel Herman has captured audiences worldwide. With “Different Eyes,” Uriel further explores the boundless dimensions of perception, transporting listeners on an intimate journey from the streets of his childhood home in Jerusalem to the lullabies he sings to his son. “Different Eyes” unravels a rich tapestry of compositions, capturing diverse facets of Herman’s musical vision. It commences with “Jerusalem” (featuring Itamar Borochov), offering a sensory immersion in Herman’s cherished childhood memories. From the sensitive interpretation of “Nature Boy” and “Luiza” to the enchanting exploration of dreams in “Fantasia,” the album encapsulates the full spectrum of Herman’s musical finesse. Notably, it includes an homage to Chopin’s famed piece, “Prelude in E Minor (Op. 28 No. 4)”, and a tribute to Michael Jordan through a rhythmically intricate composition (“MJ”) with a challenging time signature of 23/8.

A man wants it to change.
He doesn’t know if the it that he wants to change is himself, or the world. He is in disorder, the one that sometimes accompanies personal tragedies of loss, in this case, a familiar one: the loss of a lover. Perhaps, he often thought, he should have seen it coming. But then again, how can you prepare while trying to prevent it from happening?
You cannot. He is perplexed. He believed that their love is real, more real than most things he saw or felt. This thing, Love, was touchable by fingers, smellable in sweat and breath. Then, at once, it wasn’t anymore. He tried to make things right with her, to explain, believing it’s a matter of communication. After months of delving in his own misery and squalor, he realized that she didn’t leave him because something he did or didn’t do. She left him.

The man is on foreign soil, on the distant side of the Atlantic Ocean. His father is with him. They came from a city walled by sacredness. A kind of sacredness that the man never wanted to embrace. His father invited him to a ceremony, that is why they came all this long way to the remote jungle. Welcoming them at the hilltop village is a friend of the father. The wilderness stretches beneath them and the friend teaches the man about the ceremony. They will wear white, ingather near nightfall, sit on the ground in a large circle, and drink three cups of the potent medicine.

There is an oddity about this place. It is a village made of pale men and women who choose to live in the wild, enacting rituals from cultures they weren’t born into, recreating them to invoke… to invoke what? He asks himself mutely.
Come evening, an excitement of anticipation washes him. The White Night begins with a gathering. The people sit in a large circle. The shamans and the musicians man the inner circle and the outer circle is made of men and women sitting separately. Some even brought children. There are also guardians — villagers who are experienced with the medicine and ensure that the participants don’t get lost in their transgressions.
After sundown, the crowd stands up, and the man makes his way with everyone to drink the first cup. There are two lines, one for men, the other for women. He is worried. In recent months, he sunk deeper and shallower in his innermost wretchedness. What sort of anxieties will this strong experience force him to face?
He reaches the table and is given a full cup of medicine. As the cup nears his lips, he finds that the women from other line is standing in front of him, mirroring his motion. Her eyes meets his in an almost unnoticeable gesture.

He returns to sit near his father. Melodies played by the musician entrap him in thoughts that run back and forth in his mind like starving mice. He breathes, letting the medicine take him elsewhere and indeed, he is elsewhere. He shuts his eyes, but images and memories are shuffling disorderly in his brain, trying to trace answers to nameless questions.
Is his sanity at risk?
The more he tries to cling to his sanity, the deeper he is entangled in his memories and fears. So he let’s go — of what? He doesn’t need to know anymore. The forms and lights he sees with his eyes shut are bright, touchable, intriguing.
When he opens his eyes his father is shivering in an awkward position on the ground.
The father asks the son in a weak voice, Are you okay?
Yes father, the man answers, I’m fine. Are you?
Assured that his father is fine, the man stands up and looks around. A circle of people in white. He is part of a whole, a whole he was never before aware of.
The second cup of the potent brew is poured. Again, he stands in line, sips the bitter liquid and walks aside, looking for a spot to crawl into himself. Some men, like his father, are shivering, others vomiting. He finds a deserted piece of ground, lays down and drowns into himself.
Are you going through a rough patch? One of the guardians asks him.
No. I’m fine left alone.

The ceremony continues. Not all participants stand up and wait in line for the last, third cup. For his father, two cups were enough or too much. He returns to sit on the ground near his father who is still struggling with himself.
The man finds calmness. His eyes are browsing the crowd, the woods, the skies, letting the entirety of the scene act on him, the outside world coming at him with all it’s might and beauty. The women from the line is sitting some rows in front of him and their eyes meet. They look at each other, telling stories about themselves without uttering words, without I or it. A rhythm arrives in him; it begins with slow hums, a morning song that turns into an abrupt melody, reminiscence of something he must of heard or felt. The skies slowly gray and turn into an orgy of red, yellow and white. The children, asleep for the better part of the night, are now fully awake and their juvenile playfulness makes him smile. The humming he heard before, is now simmering in his ears. The man let’s the music turn his arms and hands into instruments. There is a large rock there, and he is dancing atop as he would a stage until the ceremony ends

Following the success of “Half Colors, Half Voices”, Uriel and Ehud were commissioned by the Jerusalem Film Festival to collaborate with some of Israel’s leading video artists, to create an audio-visual performance that combines Uriel and Ehud’s original music with visuals depicting Rachel Blubshtein’s life.
Premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival, this project continues to run with great success in festivals and concerts in Israel.

In September 2000, Robert Z. was given permission by the National Museum in Poznań, Poland, to make a replica of Claude Monet’s painting ‘Beach in Pourville’. He was allowed to work in the quiet museum, which had no operational security cameras and was almost deserted on weekdays. Only one female guard was around, who every now and then alerted Robert inadvertently by the click-clack sound of her shoes. When he finished what he came for, he returned home. Only days later did the truth finally dawn on the museum staff. In this revealing…