Matt Haimovitz

Matt Haimovitz (born on 3 December 1970 in Bat Yam, Israel) is an Israeli-born cellist now based in the United States and Canada. He mainly plays a cello made by Matteo Gofriller in 1710.

Family, musical education and early career

Matt Haimowitz was born in the Israeli town of Bat Yam as son of Harry and Marlena Haimowitz, a Jewish couple who moved to Israel from Romania.^[1] When he was 5 years old, the family settled in Palo Alto, California.

Haimovitz began to study the cello at the age of seven with Irene Sharp in California. At the age of nine, he switched teachers to Gábor Reitő. When Haimovitz was twelve years old, Itzhak Perlman, who was impressed by his performances at a music camp in Santa Barbara, introduced him to Leonard Rose. In order for him to study with Rose at the Juilliard School, his family moved to New York in 1983. Rose described Haimovitz as "probably the greatest talent I have ever taught", praising his "ravishingly beautiful tone" and "unusual sense of style and musical sensitivity".^{[citation needed]}

In February 1985, Haimovitz joined Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert which was filmed and broadcast. This success was followed in 1986 by an American tour with Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, as well as concerts with the New York Philharmonic. In the same year Haimovitz was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant for exceptional musical achievement, the youngest musician to receive this award. Over the next decade, Haimovitz appeared with many of the major orchestras of North America, Europe and Asia, and worked with the most distinguished conductors. In 1987, at the age of 17, Haimovitz signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, where several of his recordings of standard and non-standard repertoire won international awards.^[2] Haimovitz is married to composer Luna Pearl Woolf. They have two daughters.

Recent career

After graduating from Harvard College in 1996, and with the termination of his contract with Deutsche Grammophon, Haimovitz became dissatisfied with the traditional career path of a modern classical musician. He began exploring non-standard classical and non-classical repertoire more intensively, and began a program of concerts in unusual venues.^[3] A 2002 North American tour that attracted international attention saw Haimovitz performing J. S. Bach's cello suites in night clubs, restaurants and other highly untraditional venues in a wide variety of towns and cities across the United States. This was followed in 2003 by Haimovitz's Anthem tour, in which he brought a variety of American compositions to a similar variety of audiences, including his rendition of Jimi Hendrix's famous improvisational rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

In 2000, Haimovitz founded his own record label, Oxingale, which has released CD recordings of his own recital programs, as well as music performed by others. In 2010 this label expanded to include a music publishing branch, which features works commissioned, performed, and recorded by Haimovitz.^[4]

From 1999 to 2004, Haimovitz was a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts. Since 2004, he has taught at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in Montreal as well as the Domaine Forget academy for the arts in rural Quebec.

Discography

• Matt Haimovitz Plays Britten, Reger, Crumb, Ligeti 1992
• Bach: 6 Suites for Cello Solo 2000
• The Rose Album 2002
• Anthem 2003
• Goulash 2005
• Haydn: The Cello Concertos; Mozart: Cello Concerto 2005
• Saint-Saens: Cello Concertos / Bruch: Kol Nidrei / Lalo: Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra in D Minor 2005
• The 20th-Century Cello 2005
• Matt Haimovitz - Mozart The Mason 2006
• Après Moi, le Déluge 2006
• David Sanford & the Pittsburgh Collective: Live at the Knitting Factory 2007
• After Reading Shakespeare 2007
• Vinyl Cello 2007
• Odd Couple, 2008
• Bach: Goldberg Variations, 2008
• Meeting of the Spirits, 2010
• Shuffle. Play. Listen., 2011 (In collaboration with Christopher O'Riley)

External links

• Haimovitz official biography
• Matt Haimovitz Interview
• Oxingale records
• Hear Matt Haimovitz in concert from WGBH boston
• "Redefining Success, Off the Beaten Track - Cellist Matt Haimovitz, Bringing Bach to the Bar Band Stage" - review by Richard Scheinin in "San Jose Mercury News, 4.20.2005
• Discography on Deutsche Grammophon

References

1. ^ Judy Polan, "Q & A with Matt Haimovitz",The Jewish Ledger, April 22, 2010
2. ^ http://www2.deutschegrammophon.com/artist/whatsnew?ART_ID=HAIMA
3. ^ http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/arts-lead/Content?category=1520382
4. ^ http://oxingalemusic.com

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Name	Haimovitz, Matt
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Date of birth	3 December 1970
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