On stage, experimental cellist Mizu handles her instrument more like a dance partner than a hunk of curved wood. She stands, knees slightly bent, twirling and swaying her cello by the neck, occasionally stretching out her foot to set off an effects pedal. “It’s almost like a ballet,” Mizu told New Sounds host John Schaefer last year, suggesting that her expressive maneuvering of the cello, and her ability to undulate alongside it, might be stifled if she sat and played in a more conventional manner. The classically trained musician can’t help but tweak tradition: While studying at Juilliard, Mizu was more intrigued by modernist composers Elliot Carter and Milton Babbitt than wigged titans like Mozart and Bach. She ultimately grew frustrated “playing the same Beethoven sonata that 1,000 other cellists across the world play with equal facility,” as she recalled to Schaefer.
Meeting guitarist and composer Rachika Nayar in Brooklyn’s queer party scene cracked open new possibilities for Mizu after college. Nayar taught her how to warp her instrument with electronics. On her 2023 debut, Distant Intervals, Mizu tracked cello phrases in her closet before layering, looping, and manipulating them digitally. On her new LP Forest Scenes, Mizu inverts the technique, composing high, shining arches of cello around digital dissonance and field recordings that capture the chatter and roar of the woods. Teeming with texture—whispered phrases, dry foliage, dial-up distortion—the gripping 37-minute instrumental is an ode to transformation. Frequently gorgeous, at times unsettling, Forest Scenes is constantly in flux.
Mizu was initiating a process of gender transition while writing Forest Scenes, and elements of growth and change are ingrained within her pieces. On the slithering “Pavane,” tremulous strands of cello twist together like vines in a time-lapse video, while a convention of birds confabs in the trees. Though distinct, these elements seem to sprout from the same ecosystem, and each additional detail enriches the landscape, be it belching bowed strings, plucked melodies, or staccato breath darting around the perimeter.
On Distant Intervals, Mizu ornamented her neoclassical playing with electronic flourishes. But the jungle racket and harsh digital passages of Forest Scenes—which were recorded before Mizu even picked up a bow—are structurally and thematically vital to each song. On “Pump,” crisp twigs and leaves snap underfoot before yielding to Mizu’s insistent, almost nagging loops of cello. As the piece crescendos and tapers, the forest footsteps reemerge, their crunching turned to sloshing, as if entering a shallow brook. This slight detail suggests an entire journey.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
