Archive: Arts & Entertainment

Next month, cellist Matt Haimovitz and his all-cello ensemble – Uccello – embark on a four-city North American tour, playing Toronto (June 6), Buffalo (June 7), Ithaca (June 8-9), and New York City (June 10). Haimovitz and Uccello’s 2010 Oxingale album, Meeting of the Spirits – which contains arrangements of jazz compositions by the likes of Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Billy Strayhorn, and John McLaughlin – was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album.

All About Jazz said of the album: “Meeting of the Spirits is a captivating recording from start to finish…a work of great beauty. It succeeds in highlighting the common threads of ingenuity, power, and lyricism that run through these compositions regardless of age or genre.”

Uccello is composed of the next generation of cellists from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal, where Haimovitz is Professor of Cello. The ensemble’s June tour will showcase material from Meeting of the Spirits at some special venues: the Buffalo concert on June 7 will be held at folk-rocker Ani DiFranco’s custom-created Asbury Hall; the New York City event on June 10 will be at the one-of-a-kind floating concert hall of Bargemusic, below the Brooklyn Bridge; and the June 8-9 performances in Ithaca are part of the 18th Annual New Directions Cello Festival at the Hockett Recital Hall in the Whalen Center for Music at Ithaca College.

Last spring, Uccello appeared at the SXSW festival in Austin, performing a special prelude to the keynote address by Bob Geldof and playing showcase events that were featured on CNN.com. Uccello has performed as part of Boston’s Celebrity Series and in the programs of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Jazz at Lincoln Center, as well as in rock clubs across North America. Along with the hit Meeting of the Spirits, the cellists of Uccello have also joined Haimovitz on two other albums: Goulash! (which contained all-cello versions of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” and Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances) and VinylCello (which included an Uccello take on Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun”).

Prior to the Uccello tour, Haimovitz plays a “Beyond Bach” solo recital at Boston’s Gardner Museum on May 17, with the program encompassing Bach, living American composers, and a new arrangement of the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter.” On May 31 at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the cellist joins the Trinity Choir in Du Yun’s San; Laura Elise Schwendinger’s Six Choral Settings; and Luna Pearl Woolf’s concerto for cello and a cappella choir, Après moi, le déluge.

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