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ROCKING THE CELLO: February 8, 2006 BY MARK STRYKER
The last time cellist Matt Haimovitz appeared in metro Detroit, he played a scintillating program of contemporary American music and Bach at the Blind Pig, a scruffy rock club in Ann Arbor, for an audience of about 30 adventurous souls, most in their 20s and 30s. Haimovitz dressed down and, in deference to the club's alternative vibe and damp acoustics, amplified his cello. You don't hear many classical musicians at the Blind Pig, but Haimovitz, a 35-year-old former prodigy with a ponytail, is not exactly the cellist next door. His visit to the Blind Pig was part of a barnstorming tour that took him to similar venues in 49 states. (He's still hoping to get to Alaska.) Which is not to say that Haimovitz no longer circulates in the traditional world of classical music. This weekend he performs twice under the umbrella of the Chamber Music Society of Detroit at SeligmanPerformingArtsCenter(sans amplification). He joins the St. Lawrence String Quartet on Friday to play Schubert's C Major String Quintet. On Saturday, he'll perform all six of Bach's iconic solo cello suites in a marathon concert. The ease with which Haimovitz bridges the chasm between the Blind Pig and the Seligman center opens a window on why he is one of the most important young musicians in classical music. He is part of a growing number of musicians who some critics are beginning to recognize as postclassical -- composers, instrumentalists and ensembles pushing beyond the stultifying conventions and conservatism of the concert hall to reinvent classical music for the 21st Century. "Part of it is simply stripping away some of the image we've built around classical music," says Haimovitz, speaking from Montreal, where he teaches at McGill University. "Some of it is simply showing up in a place like the Pig; it changes the way they view what you're doing. More and more I'm reaching a broader audience, and it's exciting because it makes me feel like a relevant member of a community. When classical music is put on a pedestal and removed from all that, I'm not comfortable." There is no official postclassical manifesto but, generally, these are musicians who embrace contemporary music, experiment with formats and venues and refuse to cut themselves off from popular currents, jazz and world music. They love the three Bs, but refuse to be limited by them. They treat classical music as a living art form. Not surprisingly, they are connecting with an audience far more diverse -- by age, race and class -- than the well-to-do white-haired subscribers typical of classical music. A short list of postclassical musicians might include composer-performers like John Adams and Steve Reich and the Bang On a Can collective, the Kronos String Quartet, Kristjan Jarvi's Absolute Ensemble and Eighth Blackbird; and veteran instrumentalists like Yo-Yo Ma, Gidon Kremer and Detroit-born Kim Kashkashian, all of whom, like Haimovitz, remain on speaking terms with the establishment. Haimovitz is a compact man with a cherubic face and a soft-spoken façade that masks a fierce streak of independence. He was not a born rabble-rouser. His journey from prodigy to progressive was full of angst and anomie, and one way to look at it is that before he could begin reinventing classical music, he had to reinvent himself. Born in Israel, he moved at age 5 with his parents to California. He took up the cello at 7. Itzhak Perlman heard him and recommended him to Leonard Rose, the great cellist at the Juilliard School. At 13, he replaced an indisposed Rose in a quintet with Isaac Stern, Schlomo Mintz, Pinchas Zukerman and Mstislav Rostropovich. At 17 he was signed to a contract with the prestigious label Deutsche Grammophon, and was playing with the world's top orchestras and conductors. Big-time careers aren't always what they are cracked up to be, and Haimovitz was soon waylaid by the disconnect between his outward success and inner doubt. He grew weary of the isolation of the road and frustrated by the small menu of warhorses he was required to play. Slowly, things fell apart. His relationship with his record company soured when he nixed the release of a $200,000 recording of the Dvorak concerto made with the Berlin Philharmonic because he wasn't happy with his performance. "Then I took a couple of years off," he says. "I just didn't feel rooted." Haimovitz moved to Europe and focused on new music, collaborating with composers like Gygory Ligeti and Henri Dutilleux. He then moved home, enrolled at Harvard and met his wife, composer Luna Pearl Woolf. The pair started a record label, Oxingale, and Haimovitz rebuilt his career. Tired of waiting for audiences his age to find him in the concert hall, he began to take the music directly to them in clubs and bars, traveling the country like Jack Kerouac with a cello. It was a revelation "I never know who is going to show up," he says. "It's such a mix of backgrounds. Some people are into classical music, some are into folk, indie rock or jazz. Sometimes it's packed and sometimes it's just 30 people, but no matter who is there, I have to make the evening work and communicate. There's such electricity to play for so diverse an audience." Haimovitz found the freedom inspiring. He could change his set list in mid-performance, reacting to the audience or his own mood with a spontaneity usually denied classical performers. Haimovitz's Oxingale CDs reflect the diversity of his interest and priorities, from the Bach suites to "Goulash," a concept album exploring Eastern European themes, linking 20th Century classics by Bartok and Ligeti with improvised duets with DJ Olive, a turntablist. "The alternative world that has become part of my life ... I just can't imagine living without that now," says Haimovitz. "Yet there are aspects of the concert hall that I love and have never forsaken. "My problem with it was the layers and formality that have built up over the years. But I now feel comfortable playing an evening in a large formal space with an orchestra and then going the next night and having a completely different experience in a club and the audience has a completely different relationship to me." Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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