Grammy-nominated cellist and former professor Matt Haimovitz is returning to his old stomping grounds this weekend, bringing a high-tech reimagining of the Baroque era to The Drake in Amherst. Alongside pianist and former NPR host Christopher O’Riley, Haimovitz will perform songs from their new album, “The Bach Dialogues,” on Feb. 1, from 4 to 6 p.m.
Their album features Haimovitz on the five-stringed cello piccolo (normal cellos have four strings and are larger) and O’Riley on the clavichord (a stringed keyboard instrument), playing Bach’s “Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Cembalo” (BWV 1027–1029) and “Trio Sonata No. 5” (BWV 529). Their concert will also feature selections from “The Well-Tempered Klavier” and the “Cello Suites.”
“I envy those people that are hearing this music for the first time, because it belongs to everyone, and it is a treasure in our creative output and history,” Haimovitz said. “If you’re going to read Shakespeare, you should listen to this music.”
The two recorded the album at Skywalker Sound in California, where they had to record in separate spaces (with headsets to hear each other) because the clavichord has a more delicate sound than the cello piccolo. Their recordings were then mixed together in post-production.
“The result is a detailed, vivid performance where historical instruments, modern recording techniques, and the artists’ deep musical insight converge to create a living conversation across centuries,” a press release said.
“It’s never been done before,” Haimovitz said. “And it’s literally an acoustic impossibility that has been made manifest.”
In fact, their concert will also be atypical for a performance of Baroque music in that the two will be playing electric versions of their instruments: Haimovitz will use an an electric five-string cello piccolo, and O’Riley will use a Casio keyboard equipped with a synthesis technology called physical modeling, which O’Riley said would have “all of the hallmarks of the real sound of the clavichord, but amplified.”
The two first collaborated on the 2011 album “Shuffle.Play.Listen,” which included classical music as well as cello and piano covers of songs by bands like Arcade Fire and Radiohead.
“We worked literally 14 hours,” O’Riley said. “And I had never had the experience with another musician of having such in-depth, ego-free work with anyone.”
“First and foremost, Chris is one of the greats, and there’s a sense of complete trust on stage,” Haimovitz said. “We felt that from the first moment we started working together. As Chris mentioned, there was no ego involved. It was all about the music.”
The concert at the Drake will be a homecoming for Haimovitz, who used to live in Northampton and taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for five years.
“It’s always wonderful to come back,” Haimovitz said. “It’s a very vibrant, cultured community.”
He currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, having moved there a few months ago. In fact, when Haimovitz spoke to the Gazette on Monday, Jan. 26, he was at the airport in Philadelphia, waiting to fly back to Minneapolis, where he was slated to perform in a memorial for Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who had been shot to death by ICE agents there a few days prior.
“We need music,” Haimovitz said. “We need to come together as Americans and shape a country the way we want to shape it and not live in fear. I’m very emotional, actually, right now, and it’s going to be therapeutic for me to make music for the community. I’ll do everything I can in my power to keep the peace but keep the resistance alive.”
Haimovitz said that Bach can help create common ground during challenging times.
“We live in very troubled, divisive times, and somehow, the music of Bach has a universality,” he said. “It reaches the human heart, and it engages the mind.”
As he sees it, Bach is a standalone composer, someone whose work “really cuts through all the layers and reaches a human nature, and there’s something inexplicable about it.” O’Riley agreed: “There is no other composer, I maintain, that you can learn as much from. … There’s always more to know about this music and more to love.”
“You can enjoy the theory and the math and the ingenuity and invention of his music, but ultimately, from the first notes, it just touches you in a certain way,” Haimovitz said.
The press release specifically describes Bach as having a “life-affirming imagination.” As Haimovitz defined it: “If something like that can come from the human imagination, there is hope.”
Tickets to “The Bach Dialogues” are $30 in advance via thedrakeamherst.org or $35 at the door. “The Bach Dialogues” is available on all digital streaming platforms.
For more information about Matt Haimovitz or Christopher O’Riley, visit matthaimovitz.com or christopheroriley.com, respectively. O’Riley said the two may add another show at the Drake, so visit the venue’s website for the latest updates.