“Students eating at Columbia University’s John Jay Dining Hall, an airy den reverberating with undergraduate chatter, were in for a surprise last Wednesday,” writes David Allen in Tuesday’s (1027) New York Times. “They found Matt Haimovitz—the cellist who helped to start a trend by performing in places like an East Village punk club and a pizzeria in Jackson, Miss.—playing Bach.… Over a two-night Bachathon at Miller Theater on Thursday and Saturday, Mr. Haimovitz played the complete solo cello suites along with new works by composers commissioned to respond to Bach. But this restless innovator has long been dissatisfied with the spaces that tradition has handed down to classical performers. So on Wednesday and Friday, he played the same works in public areas around Columbia.… Mr. Haimovitz has the confidence to step beyond insular, defensive debates about how to ‘save’ classical music (from what?), change the industry’s culture (he already has) or more boldly still transform the culture around it.… In his hands, Bach’s music turns into quotidian sound, a music fully part of the now.” The composers whose commissioned responses to Bach Haimovitz performed at the Miller Theatre were Mohammed Fairouz, Philip Glass, Vijay Iyer, Roberto Sierra, Luna Pearl Woolf, and Du Yun.
Posted October 28, 2015
