New music video from Maya Lumen

There are artists who make music and then there are artists who become it; Maya Lumen sits firmly in the latter camp. Conceived by painter, healer and musician Jacqueline F. Moore, Maya Lumen is a a vessel, a living collaboration of sound, emotion and consciousness. Based around a rotating collective of global artists, the project is a shape-shifting orchestration of rhythm, arrangement and harmony where every song is a meeting point and every performance becomes a connection between souls.

Maya Lumen channels what Jacqueline calls “soul-force,” the ineffable energy that binds creativity and healing and her 2020 debut EP Ellipsis captures this spirit beautifully, blending acoustic textures with Latin, jazz and symphonic flourishes. Jacqueline’s path to that moment however, was anything but straightforward. Before Maya Lumen, she was already immersed in a life of creativity and purpose as a painter, licensed therapist and educator, she built a career exploring the human psyche and its capacity for growth. She taught at her alma mater, ran her own Marriage and Family Therapy practice and trained in yoga, meditation and reiki.

Through it all, her artistic vision ran parallel, from drawing and photography to performing in competitive high school jazz and wind ensembles in the Bay Area. Yet, despite her creative abundance, something deeper tugged at her, a magnetic pull toward sound as a healing language. That calling found its voice through an unexpected twist and while recovering from a severe hip rupture, she found herself unable to play bass, her usual instrument of choice. In its place, she picked up a mahogany Martin guitar and that simple act would transform everything. Recovery soon became revelation and through the guitar, she began writing again, translating emotion into melody, grief into expression, becoming an artist and a collective born from transformation.

Her second EP, currently in development, is set to expand her artistic world even further, pairing music with visual art designed to speak directly to what she calls “the collective consciousness.” It’s a continuation of her philosophy that creativity is not solitary but communal, that sound, movement and image are threads of the same fabric. The debut music video for “Maynard’s Song,” one of her most personal and enchanting pieces, came together through a network of local musicians, dancers and filmmakers, distilling a shared act of devotion to the art.

The song itself was inspired by a profoundly personal muse: her late black cat, Maynard, named after Tool’s Maynard James Keenan. In her darkest hours, the feline companion became a symbol of strength and determination, a quiet guardian of her healing and “Maynard’s Song” captures that energy in sound. Its acoustic warmth and shuffling rhythm evoke the feeling of wandering through a desert dream, where grief takes on the shape of something beautiful. There are no grand philosophies here, just a therapeutic creative outlet that arrives when you let go, captured in a mesmeric jam of rustling drums, twanging guitar notes and delicate keys, peppered with intricate instrumental flourishes.

The accompanying music video carries that same intimacy, swapping literal imagery for abstraction and instead of feline cameos, black silhouettes move like shadows in rhythm with the melody, their shapes dissolving into the song’s ebb and flow. The black-and-white styling mirrors the aesthetic of Maya Lumen’s accompanying art book, emphasising continuity between her sonic and visual worlds. In this convergence of light and dark, movement and stillness, sound and silence, Maya Lumen reveals her true purpose, creating space for connection, healing and transformation through sound.

Watch the music video for Maynard’s Song below

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