Matt Haimovitz and Krakauer release “Akoka,” April 1
On April 1, Oxingale releases its second Haimovitz collaborative recording of the season, Akoka, which the cellist created in league with klezmer clarinetist and composer David Krakauer. The album includes the title work by Krakauer, Messiaen’s great Quartet for the End of Time and a remix of the Messiaen by electronica artist Socalled. Haimovitz and Krakauer will celebrate the release of Akoka in concert at the Mondavi Center in Davis, CA on April 5. A trailer explaining the project with music available for streaming can be found here.
In September, Oxingale released the multimedia storybook Angel Heart, a collaboration among Haimovitz, children’s author Cornelia Funke, composer Luna Pearl Woolf and soprano Lisa Delan that also occasioned performances at Carnegie Hall and for Cal Performances in Berkeley. The San Francisco Chronicle singled out Haimovitz’s playing as “inventive and arresting.” On April 1, Oxingale will release Akoka, an album revolving around Olivier Messiaen’s ever-moving Quartet for the End of Time. Haimovitz began developing a program involving Messiaen’s work – which the French composer famously composed in a Nazi prison camp – with clarinetist-composer David Krakauer at the Banff Centre in Canada in 2007. Krakauer – a virtuoso of the klezmer style as well as a composer and arranger of works for the Kronos Quartet, among many others – conceived an improvisatory piece named for Henri Akoka, the Jewish clarinetist who performed in the 1941 premiere of Messiaen’s work in the prison camp. Krakauer also joins Haimovitz, violinist Jonathan Crow and pianist Geoffrey Burleson for the performance of Quartet for the End of Time. The album’s other piece is a remix of the Messiaen work by the sound artist Socalled.
About the new album’s program, Haimovitz says: “To focus on Akoka’s story is to bring out the human aspect of Messiaen’s composition as seen through the eyes of one individual caught up in terrifying events beyond his control. The Messiaen quartet is bookmarked between the two new works in a way that lifts the piece out of the polite confines of a normal chamber music performance.”
Matt Haimovitz: Spring 2014
April 5
Davis, CA: Mondavi Center
Krakauer: Akoka: The End of Time
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
David Krakauer, Matt Haimovitz, Socalled & Friends
April 9
Basel, Switzerland
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi” (European Premiere)
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies
April 23, 24, 28, 30
London, UK
Cadogan Hall
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi”
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies
April 25
Basingstoke, UK
The Anvil
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi”
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies
April 27
Cambridge, UK
The Corn Exchange
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi”
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies
April 29
Cardiff, UK
St. David’s Hall
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi”
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies
www.matthaimovitz.com
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© 21C Media Group, March 2014