Anaïs Maviel
New York, NY
Music/Composition
I give, receive, frame and amplify music that unites and bridges. Genres won’t help you get a clear view of my work, but if you like jazz, you’ll hear Afrocentric traditions and innovations. If you like classical, you’ll sense esoteric concepts and sacred structures. If you like a good song, I’ll give you a poem and make you dance. If you are into ART, there will be craft, symbolism and naked truth. If you want healing… that will happen always, as we hold space together.
My work as a vocalist and composer focuses on the function of art to address Relation. With sound, I intend to lay common grounds for utopian futures. I connect intimacy and subconscious narratives with collective and large scale principles. I navigate song, choral, instrumental music and staging with a strong connection to cosmologies of sound and speech rooted in oral traditions such as mantra and ring shout. My works hold space for transformation. With traditional and experimental approaches, I investigate the power of sound to shape reality. I care for the stakes of hybridity in culture, working towards opening up the interstices between genres, for a multiple, inclusive-yet-sacred experience of music. I conducted scholarly research on music & utopia in Black American music, interviewed master musicians and have a sustained poetic and essay writing practice. I hold a masters degree from Paris Diderot University in modern literature, aesthetics and contemporary thought. I have collaborated with William Parker, Meshell Ndegeocello, Pauline Kim Harris, Alarm Will Sound, Okwui Okpokwasili and Stefani Jemison, among many. I write, perform and teach in New York, throughout the Americas and Europe. Both solo albums hOULe & in the garden received international acclaim. Lastly, I am 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.