Cellist Matt Haimovitz brings heavenly music to malls, clubs and bars

Something of a shift in musical venues has brought Haimovitz a reputation as a player with a flair for the maverick performance, if not a pioneer. In a series of concerts officially called “Buck the Concerto” (this might be one of Haimovitz’ many Bach-themed puns—“Playing Bach from Bar to Bar” is another) he toured the United States and brought down the cello’s bass-heavy cant from vaulted recital halls to intimate coffee shops, the pedestrian anonymity of shopping malls, and the grimy rocker sanctum that was CBGB’s. To a modern sensibility, stumbling upon the graceful turns of Bach’s suites in familiar spaces is striking, but for Haimovitz it’s a long-awaited return.

“Chamber music belongs in more intimate spaces, and that more direct contact raises the idea that this music was not meant to relax you—it was meant to provoke you,” he says. “There was humor, there was pathos, there were all kinds of emotions, but it was meant to get your heart and mind working. Concert hall performances can get formulaic and predictable, so all this brings me closer to my audience and really makes the musical experiences as communicative as they can be.”

But bringing heavenly music down to earth isn’t an endeavor set up for the sake of experimentation. A 13-year-old Haimovitz made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic. As a scarcely older teenager, he made his first recording with James Levine and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and all the stops in the international orchestra circuit have since been given a heavy dose of Haimovitz’ capable hands. He also is the reigning impresario of a studio of young cellists at McGill University, a group he calls Ucello when they play together. So with an established career already behind him, changes in musical space and trials in sonorous alchemy are simply the aftereffects of a wish to do something more with a four-stringed instrument.

“Scherzo Grosso,” a piece written by David Safford for a twenty-piece band and cello, was the first piece in the “Buck the Concerto” series. Its eccentric nature, inspired by talented but notoriously reclusive Pittsburgh Collective trumpet player Ed Nelson, contains within it the pioneering spirit that Haimovitz ardently seeks. He describes one of the piece’s movements as a “kind of John Coltrane meets Prokofiev” before illustrating a vivid picture of Nelson: “I remain this stubborn hero to the end,” he says. “Around me, no matter how noisy it gets, not matter what tone direction I get pushed into, I put up a fight. So at the end everybody ends up on an E flat and I won’t give in—I’m on a low D. There’s definitely a sense of a character, larger than life, who to some extent didn’t really belong, and whose voice had to be heard.”          

It’s not uncommon to see Haimovitz banter his audience with colloquial air, cracking jokes and baby-faced smiles in between suites. At the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music he’ll play solo after “Scherzo Grosso” for the In The Blue Room production, with DJ/composer Mason Bates’ soundscapes gracing the space between pieces. You might find him—stripping down a formal veil, but retaining enough mystique with his consummate skill—conjuring something very close to real human contact.

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