From Newsday, May 2004

WHEN&WHERE Matt Haimovitz plays works by Jimi Hendrix, Osvaldo Golijov, Lou Harrison, Luna Pearl Woolf and others. Saturday at 8:00 p.m. at CBGB, 315 Bowery, Manhattan. For tickets and information, call 866-468-7619, or visit www.ticketweb.com.

Today's culture vultures, along with many practitioners of the so-called fine arts, tend to associate the illustrious works of the past with the sterile repositories in which we now store them: museums, concert halls and opera houses. These people sometimes shudder at the thought that, for centuries, paintings were considered functional objects much like pots or chairs, albeit generally used in conjunction with religious devotions.

Similarly, the idea that masterpieces by Bach or Schubert might have been played in informal social settings, while people were eating, drinking, smoking and checking each other out… Oh, the horror!

Yet Bach did indeed lead performances of his Brandenburg Concertos at a Leipzig coffeehouse, and many of Schubert's works received their premieres at the boozy, rollicking affairs known as "Schubertiads." So but for the absence of tobacco (a concession to our priggish times), the recent concert at Joe's Pub by cellist Matt Haimovitz and the Miró Quartet was both a superb musical event and an admirably authentic one.

That improbable classical venue hosted Haimovitz and the Miró's performance of Schubert's incandescent String Quintet, D. 956, one of two works featured on "Epilogue," their new Oxingale CD. "Those of you who have never heard this piece before—I envy you," Haimovitz said in his introductory remarks. With that, the casually dressed artists sat down and made beautiful music amidst the clatter of plates, the murmur of servers and the shudder of the Lexington Avenue subway.

"The subway is a drawback," Haimovitz admitted several days later over brunch, "but that's true of Zankel or even Carnegie Hall." Round-faced and sweetly unpretentious, the 33-year-old cellist was back in town to receive the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center before resuming his solo "Anthem" tour, which has taken him through 29 states to such unconventional settings as folk clubs, garages and even pizza joints. His off-the-beaten track gigs sometimes attract standing-room-only crowds; other times, he noted dryly, they constitute "character-building experiences."

On Saturday, Haimovitz returns to CBGB, where he played Bach's cello suites in 2002 (the first classical program given at the fabled punk club) and recorded the title cut on his "Anthem" CD: a plangent, blistering transcription of Jimi Hendrix's solo guitar version of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"I think that if you want to reach out to new audiences, you have to take a larger perspective and say, 'This is the musical world we live in, and let's fight for some space there,'" Haimovitz explained. He sounded a skeptical note about the patronizing assumptions that underlie many classical outreach programs. "There are people out there who simply don't know that [classical music] exists, and yet they're very sophisticated listeners who don't need any 'educating.' They just need to be presented with this music."

The concert at Joe's Pub was a case in point. The performing space had its drawbacks: amplification coarsened the tone of Haimovitz and his colleagues, and rasping cocktail shakers and slamming doors sometimes threatened to shatter the spell the musicians worked so intently to cast. Still, Schubert's slow movement, interweaving the uneasy pulse of Haimovitz's pizzicato with the gossamer playing of the Miró Quartet, stopped even the waiters dead in their tracks. Moments after the quintet's final notes died away, a young man clad in leather and chains inquired urgently of the cashier, "Where are the CDs?"

"On the one hand, it's surreal," Haimovitz mused. "You think, 'What are a string quartet and a cellist doing at a rock and roll club?' But the plusses far outweigh the minuses. Having people listening comfortably, without prejudices, having a drink, hearing this music as it should always be heard—as though it's being played for the first time… And then being close up and incredibly exposed to the audience: it's something shared, and that to me is what performance is all about."

That sense of community was missing from Haimovitz's early career as a child prodigy with a rich recording contract and engagements with the world's leading orchestras. "It wasn't the aspect of playing with the big symphonies that was isolating. It's that I started as young as I did, moving from place to place, not being grounded." His clear, forthright gaze clouded as he recalled those lonely times. "It wasn't until I went to Harvard that I felt, this is what it means to live with a group of people, to grow with them and feed your soul and intellect with all that."

After Harvard, Haimovitz dropped off the classical A-list, moving to Paris for several years and marrying composer Luna Pearl Woolf. In search of a common project, the couple founded Oxingale, a limited edition press and then production company. Haimovitz's "totally arbitrary goal" of recording the Bach cello suites before he turned 30 led to the launch of the Oxingale label. "I could have gone to a major label and begged them to release it," he laughed, "but we didn't want to give up that control."

Haimovitz still sells most of his recordings "post-gig," though Oxingale recently signed a distribution agreement with Artemis Classics. In a few months, Haimovitz and Oxingale will set up shop in Montréal, where he has been appointed to the music faculty at McGill University. He expressed admiration for the way that "the classics are part of the popular culture" in Canada, observing that "there are things that we [in the United States] could learn from Canada—and not just that." He plans to continue his whistle-stop tour, with full support from McGill.

"This is my path," he said thoughtfully, "and it's obviously not for everyone. Still, there is a fear in the classical world that popularizing the art, making it available to more people somehow 'corrupts' or 'degrades' it. And that's absolutely ludicrous." Haimovitz beamed as he considered the prospect of playing everywhere from cow barns to the great palaces of classical music. "Things will change, by necessity, and we'll be having a different conversation in ten years."