01
Gate 9
The opening track immediately establishes a sense of transition. A gate is a threshold — a place between departure and arrival, between the familiar and the unknown.
“From there, the album begins its ascent.”
ELEVATION
featuring Matej Meštrović
For Your Consideration
Best New Age, Ambient or Chant Album
Listen
Some journeys
are measured
in miles.
Others
are measured
in who we become.
ELEVATION is an exploration of both.
9,744 ft
Schilthorn Summit, Swiss Alps
High above the Swiss Alps, a piano became part of the landscape.
ELEVATION began as more than a title.
It is a journey — an exploration deep within oneself in order to move higher. Reflection. Uncertainty. Persistence. Perspective. Transformation. The music doesn't ask the listener only to observe the journey. It asks them to come along.
Where music met the landscape
To rise,
we first have
to go within.
Elevation is not constant triumph. Before the openness, there is introspection. Before the light, there is the going-within.
The ascent continues, within
The Music
ELEVATION was built across oceans — a quietly international collaboration, note by note.
Matthew Mayer
Artist / Composer
Independent pianist and composer, and creator of ELEVATION.
Matej Meštrović
Featured Artist
Croatian pianist and composer, and creator of The Stringbreaker project.
Malina Moye
Producer
American singer-songwriter, left-handed guitarist, actress, model, entrepreneur, and creative force who recently launched her own guitar line.
Masa Takumi
Producer
Japanese GRAMMY®-winning multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music producer.
Alois Rettenbacher
Location Director
Switzerland based professional paraglider, videographer, and adventurer.
Viktoria Perger
Cover Design
Budapest-based creative whose cinematic work lives at the intersection of atmosphere and human presence.
Matthew Mayer built an independent career, one performance at a time, out of a small town in South Dakota. The career itself is its own kind of elevation.
#1
Billboard Charting Artist
700M+
Streams Worldwide
25+ yrs
Independent
2×
Telly Award Winner
Not a boast. A path — walked one key at a time, for more than a quarter century.
Track by Track
The Album, Reviewed
Piano Revenge Magazine — Album Review
“There are artists whose music we encounter once, and there are artists whose musical paths gradually become part of our own. Matthew Mayer belongs to the second kind.”Piano Revenge MAG
02
Elevation
The title track gives the journey its central metaphor. Height becomes not simply a physical destination, but a change of perspective — created through repetition, melodic expansion, harmonic colour and the gradual opening of musical space.
“He does not need to force the music upwards. The ascent happens naturally.”
03
Lift Off
Captures the exhilaration of departure.
04
New Experiences
Turns towards the emotional possibilities that emerge once we leave familiar territory.
05
Facing the Mountain
The mood changes. Here, movement becomes confrontation. The mountain is no longer something seen from a distance; it is something standing directly before us.
06
The Paraglide
The metaphor becomes physical. Paragliding requires trust — the willingness to move forward without controlling every element of the journey. Mayer's music often possesses that same quality of openness.
“To rise is one thing. To surrender to the air is another.”
07
Walking Along the Danube
Perhaps the album's most evocative moment. After mountains and flight, we are suddenly walking — slower, reflective, horizontal rather than vertical. Geography becomes memory.
“Elevation does not always mean going higher. Sometimes it means seeing differently.”
08
In the Balkan Clouds
Lifts the listener back into the air, but now from a softer, more dreamlike perspective.
09
East of Home
The final piece leaves us with perhaps the most intriguing idea of the entire album. After passing through gates, mountains, clouds and rivers, it ends not with a triumphant arrival, but with distance.
“It begins with departure. It moves through discovery. And it ends with perspective.”
“Elevation is ultimately not an album about reaching the top. It is about what happens when we keep moving — and perhaps that is the most beautiful kind of ascent.”
Album Information
Liner Notes
Release DateJuly 31st, 2026
ComposersMatthew Mayer, Matej Meštrović
PerformersMatthew Mayer, Matej Meštrović
ProducersMalina Moye, Masa Takumi
EngineeringRachel Frazier
MixingRachel Frazier
MasteringRachel Frazier
Cover DesignViktoria Perger
ELEVATION
Listen and consider.
Matthew Mayer
featuring Matej Meštrović
Produced by Malina Moye and Masa Takumi
For Your Consideration
Best New Age, Ambient or Chant Album