| Matt Haimovitz
(born on 3 december1970 in Bat Yam,Israel) is an Israeli-born cellist now based in the United States and Canada. He is known not only for his outstanding technical and musical skill, but also for his highly unusual concert career and repertoire choices. He mainly plays a cello made by Matteo Gofriller in 1710.
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MATT HAIMOVITZ TICKETS
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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 came to Israel from
Romania. When he was 5 years old, the family settled in 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 Reito. 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 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".
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.
Matt is married to composer Luna Pearl Woolf. They have a daughter, who was born in 2007.
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. 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.
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