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March 26-April 1, 2009
buzz@boulderweekly.com
• Rocking the classics
Why is world-famous cellist Matt Haimovitz hanging out in bars?
by Dave Kirby
• The hope
Brett Dennen seeks to balance popularity and artistic expression
by Alan Sculley
 Rocking the classics
Why is world-famous cellist Matt Haimovitz hanging out in bars?
by Dave Kirby
While it may be something most of us never have to worry about, there’s a dimension to classically trained musical virtuosity that doesn’t get a lot of attention.
It can become a lifelong sentence of being, essentially, a living museum exhibit.
But for the better part of a decade, cellist Matt Haimovitz has been cultivating a career intended to derail the inevitable, taking his 300-year-old Gofriller into small venues, bars and nightclubs, bending and swaying and cranking his vise-grip vibrato on pieces ranging from Bach to Elliot Carter to John McLaughlin to Jimmy Page, testing a faith that the instrument’s uniquely expressive voice would speak to a non-classical audience.
In other words, playing gigs, rather than recitals.
“Partly, it came from not seeing my generation out there in the concert hall, feeling like I was part of a dying breed. And just the whole idea of being limited to a certain repertoire that people expected of me, you know? Playing concertos with orchestra, very few of them, over and over again, hundreds of times. It felt like something I didn’t want to be doing for a lifetime. And with everything changing around it, with technology and the Internet and distribution of music and all that, I felt like I wanted to be a productive member of society,” he says, laughing a bit. “And do something more meaningful.
“So I had to find ways to adapt. The music gives me so much meaning, and I had to find news ways of sharing it.”
You have to master the game before you earn the right to challenge the rules, and Haimovitz’s early and stunning success granted him the privilege of assaulting the paradigm from within. Mentored at a pre-teen age by Itzhak Perlman, Haimovitz studied with the renowned instructor Leonard Rose at Julliard at the age of 13, who described him as “probably the greatest talent I have ever taught.” Within two years, Haimovitz was touring with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra and performing dates with the New York Philharmonic, as well as garnering an Avery Fisher Career Grant — at 15, the youngest person ever to receive this recognition.
Haimovitz signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon at 17 and went on to record on that label, perhaps the most widely respected classical music label in the world, for a decade. By the late ’90s, though, the contract had run its course, and Haimovitz was bringing Bach cello suites, 20th-century pieces and bits of rock (like “Kashmir”) into the clinking-glass world of tavern culture. By 2003, he had become something of a video Internet sensation by way of his frighteningly expressive read of Hendrix’s famed Woodstock “The Star Spangled Banner,” an interpretation of an interpretation, with which he closed a program at CBGB.
While he admits there wasn’t really a blueprint for what he was doing, we wondered if he nonetheless sought out advice from any of his teachers or fellow players.
“You know, I really had to find my own way. A bit of trial and error. When I decided to do, I just went ahead and did it. I didn’t really seek out any advice from anybody.
“I made a few mistakes. But I also learned that in many instances, audiences were incredibly forgiving. One of the first lessons I learned playing these kinds of venues was embracing your vulnerability as a human being. It’s something that actually brings you closer to your audience… So when I did make mistakes, the audience enjoyed watching me get out of it.”
While we were preparing for our interview with Haimovitz, another figure in contemporary classical iconoclasm came to mind: Glenn Gould. While Haimovitz is presumably free of the personal eccentricities of the late Canadian piano virtuoso, we still saw a few parallels between the two across a combustible blending of spectacular virtuosity, restless musical inquisitiveness and a deep skepticism about the business of being a classical musician. And, to some extent, the fact that both had buried the stanchions of their musical career in the music of Bach.
Haimovitz seemed flattered by the comparison.
“I adore his artistry, his musicianship, his brains… his intellectual curiosity. He never contrived an interpretation — he had to believe it with all his heart and mind, and even if you disagreed with it, you had to respect it.”
But the art of performing and coaxing an audience was something Haimovitz learned on the way. And, partly, on the bus.
“I once went on a tour with 20 other musicians, and I was the only classical player. Everyone else was jazz, rock ’n’ roll, DJ…
“The first couple of shows I started with some really hardcore contemporary classical; David Sanford, some other things. At one point, the promoter for the tour came back to me and said, ‘Y’know, I think this is really great, but… you have to give them a little love before you hit them over the head. You might want to play… a little Bach, maybe?’ I said, ‘Oh, I’d be delighted. I thought we were on a rock ’n’ roll tour. I thought I needed to be cutting edge.’”
“So it was a lesson I learned early. Once you embrace your audience and give them something they can comprehend, they’ll be willing to follow you, and you can take them to unknown places.”
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On the Bill
Matt Haimovitz performs at Rock N Soul Café, 5290 Arapahoe Ave., Suite 1, Boulder, 303-443-5108, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 27; at Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge, Denver, 930 Lincoln St., 303-839-5100, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturday, March 28; and at Grusin Hall, CU campus, Boulder, 303-492-8008, at 7:30 p.m. on
Monday, March 30.
 The hope
Brett Dennen seeks to balance popularity and artistic expression
by Alan Sculley
Brett Dennen had never come into an album with nearly the number of songs he had ready for his latest CD, Hope For The Hopeless. But then he’d never done an album as important for his career.
“I was feeling a lot of pressure,” Dennen said in a phone interview. “I knew I was going to make this new record with Downtown Records. It was a step up. It was a whole new ballgame. And I knew I was kind of poised at this position in my music career where I knew I had to make a solid, solid record that shows off really good songwriting. So I wanted to write as much as I could and see what cream rose to the top, see what’s going to jell together.”
Taking a month off in January 2008 to focus on writing, Dennen ended up with 43 songs. This led to a feeling Dennen didn’t anticipate.
“The problem is I ran into trouble with that because I got in over my head,” he said. “I wrote too many. I didn’t know how to pick which songs and what to do.”
Fortunately, Dennen had a manager, a producer (John Alagia) and a record label to turn to for help in choosing the 11 songs that eventually made Hope For The Hopeless. And the career growth Dennen thought might come with the CD is beginning to happen.
The CD debuted last fall at number four on the Independent Album chart and at number 41 on Billboard magazine’s Top 200 album chart, and his single, “Make You Crazy,” has gotten considerable triple-A radio play.
The music on Hope For The Hopeless, by Dennen’s own admission, was crafted with an eye toward having a wider appeal than his first two CDs, a self-titled 2005 release and the 2006 CD So Much More. Both of those albums were stripped back, nearly solo acoustic works, and Dennen said he realized that limited the audience for those records. So for Hope For The Hopeless, Dennen made a full-on rootsy pop record in the tradition of artists like John Mayer or Jason Mraz. The songs are fleshed out with a full plugged-in band, and Dennen said several songs were chosen and recorded in a form that would make them more likely to get radio play.
“I watched how So Much More reacted to people. I watched how people loved it, but a lot of people didn’t catch on,” he said. “I thought, man, I’ve had some triple-A radio [play]. In order to make the shows bigger and really get out there, I need to be played on a different format. I need to be on like Hot AC radio. I was like, what the heck does it take to do that? It’s going to take a song that gets to the chorus a lot faster. Nobody can sit and listen to an intro, a musical intro. The songs are going to have to get to the chorus quicker. They’re going to have to be simple. It’s going to have to have a strong hook.”
Hope For The Hopeless is one case where an artist benefited by aiming for a more commercial sound.
The beefed-up instrumentation and economical arrangements on songs like “Closer To You,” “When She’s Gone” and “San Francisco” bring out the melodic qualities in Dennen’s songwriting, add layers of color and interest and the addition of drums, percussion and bass gives the songs some much-needed heft that the stark acoustic treatments of earlier material didn’t provide.
Dennen’s approach to Hope For The Hopeless might cause some to think he wants stardom and attention. But in talking to the lanky six-foot-four redhead, this appears to be true only in a limited sense.
Raised in northern California, Dennen, 28, developed a love for the outdoors, backpacking and hiking. He worked for a number of years as a camp counselor, leading backpacking programs for at-risk youth and working with the Mosaic Project, which takes fifth graders in the San Francisco bay area into the wilderness to learn about human relations and living better alongside others. He now lives in a modest two-bedroom home in Santa Monica and says his growing popularity has yet to have much impact in his off-stage life.
What has changed is the way Dennen can present his music, particularly on tour. His winter dates represent his first extended tour as a headliner, and he’s been able to put together the kind of backing band that will allow him to give his songs the treatments he wants.
“It’s pretty much the best representation that I could have put together with the time I had and the resources that I had to get the songs from Hope For The Hopeless out,” said Dennen, who plays guitar and sings. “I have myself, a drummer, a bass player, another guitar player and a keyboard player. Between the five of us, were working on just really doing a good live interpretation of the songs.”
On the Bill
Brett Dennen performs with Angus and Julia Stone at 9 p.m. on Thursday, April 2, at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-443-3399.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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