Brouhaha: Shaped By Fire Album Release Party
Yale Schwarzman Center
New Haven
April 14, 2026
Violinist Maiani da Silva opened a show for her debut album with a song inspired by a spoon.
Yes, a spoon.
The spoon that influenced composer Zachary Good was obviously special. The piece, “In Memory of a Spoon,” awakened a feeling that was both ancient and avant-garde. Though it had baroque undertones, its atmospheric sound meant the song wasn’t overcrowded with embellishment.
On Tuesday night, the Yale faculty member, chamber musician, and violinist for the four-time Grammy-winning sextet Eighth Blackbird performed songs from her album Brouhaha: Shaped By Fire in the swanky Well at the Yale Schwarzman Center as part of the album-release party. This was the first real concert da Silva has performed for a Connecticut audience.
Luminous passages from “In Memory of a Spoon” would stop abruptly, leaving small pockets of silence until a new brilliant idea would begin. Several well-placed moments of bariolage ignited the piece, adding texture that gave the impression that there was more than one violin in the room. Da Silva coaxed a remarkable palette of sounds from the violin. At times it sounded like a woodwind instrument or a bird’s morning chirps.
At a point it felt like the notes were racing against one another – brighter notes rubbed up against darker ones. Da Silva’s body swayed and her head dipped with each glide of her bow, though her figure remained as taut as the strings she played. She radiated with a controlled intensity.
The Well was the perfect venue for music from an album informed by anthropology and nature: It was carved out of the Center’s stone foundation – a striking example of humankind’s ability to shape our environment.
Brouhaha is the first solo project that da Silva has spearheaded. “Music is the tip of the iceberg. To put this together took years of my life,” she said. For the album, she took her love of anthropology to the next level. She asked composers to pick a theme of human nature that incited their curiosity. The composers then got to explore their ideas with anthropologists.
“I sometimes think about how I’m walking around [Yale], and I’m surrounded by people who are the experts in their fields. They’re just in front of me, waiting for their coffee in line,” extolled da Silva. “It kind of dawned on me that I’m in this environment where I can reach out to these experts.”
In addition to speaking with professionals, da Silva and the composers read and discussed books, articles and scientific papers. Their efforts resulted in layered, thoughtful music. Last night, the audience also heard da Silva perform grand arrangements by composers Ian Gottlieb (“Shaped by Fire”) and Fiola Evans (“Bloom”) inspired by fire and flowers.
Schwarzman Center Deputy Director Maurice L. Harris reflected, “Even though it comes from a scientific place, it’s translated into a medium that anyone can relate to and connect to. Music is a sort of universal language. I think [this] is a great example of how we can take something very conceptual and turn it into something that’s very relatable.”
So, a spoon, really? That is relatable, one would say.
Composer Zachary Good picked the theme of “tools,” the spoon being one of his favorites, because he loves soup. As he studied the spoon to make the piece, he became fascinated by a tool he took for granted. Good wrote “In Memory” about a hypothetical spoon that might be discovered by some alien anthropologist a thousand years from now. “These aliens are going to discover Earth in whatever condition we leave it, and they’re going to find a lot of spoons and wonder what that is,” he said with a laugh.
Good also considered how music relates to anthropology. He incorporated style brisé (French for “broken style”) into the piece. It’s a style in which chords are not played all at once; instead notes unfold one by one, often in an almost improvised pattern. He then needed his piece to “look like a spoon” so he turned to his favorite sound on the violin – bariolage. It’s a technique in which the player rapidly alternates between two or more strings. For Good, bariolage represents roundness, a returning.
“The rest just sort of came out,” he admitted. Impressive considering that this was the first piece he wrote for an instrument other than his own (baroque recorder and clarinet).
At the end of the show, the composers joined da Silva on stage for a conversation, along with paleoanthropologist Jessica Thompson who was blown away by the show.
“I’ve always been a bit hopeless at music. When I hear it, it’s like some kind of magic. I can’t believe that humans can do this, that we can accomplish this,” expressed Thompson. “One of the things that really sets us apart from other creatures is our ability to manipulate our environments in a way that makes so much music.”
Da Silva said that releasing Brouhaha: Shaped by Fire is the biggest accomplishment she’s ever had in her life.
“Now, I feel like, Holy shit, I did it. I’m proud of myself.”
You can purchase the 9-track album of violin and voice on Bandcamp. Visit Maiani’s website to stay tuned for upcoming performances (crossing my fingers for the Peabody Museum!) and part two of Brouhaha.
