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Montage Art, books, diverse creations 26 Open Book 27 Photos in Thread 30 Carpenter Center’s Craftsman 31 Art as Chattel 32 Chapter and Verse 33 Blindspot: A Novel 34 Off the Shelf the four-day recording session ended. “He can start changing everything and you have to re- practice it.” Growing up, Haimovitz rarely faced this danger. When he en- rolled at Princeton at 17—after studying at Juilliard for years, performing at Carnegie Hall, and signing a long-term record deal with Deutsche Grammophon— he had yet to Matt Haimovitz is as comfort- play a note by able in rock a living com- clubs as he is in poser. All that symphony halls. changed when electric guitarist Steven Mackey, a profes- sor of composition at Princeton, invited The Maximalist Haimovitz to join him for a little free-form improv. Haimovitz credits those sessions Matt Haimovitz takes the cello to new places. for changing his approach to music. “All of PAUL GLEASON a sudden I’m trying to find sounds that by work with electric guitar,” he recalls. “All of a sudden [I’m] veryone in the recording booth measures, to help it cut through the deep doing things the wrong way agreed the cello wasn’t coming thicket of piano accompaniment. Jazz to get the right sound.” He Visit harvard- mag.com/extras through. Matt Haimovitz ’96 and opera singers, Sanford pointed out, dropped out of Princeton to to hear clips from huddled over the sound controls do it all the time. Haimovitz joked that tour (transferring to Harvard Matt Haimovitz’s with his wife, producer Luna the next 50 cellists who played the piece three years later), but his ex- “Odd Couple.” EPearl Woolf ’95, and the music’s com- would think he was doing it wrong, but periences there redirected his career to an poser, David Sanford, to listen to the play- agreed to give it a try. exploration of the outer limits of his in- back. Sanford suggested that Haimovitz “That’s the danger of having the com- strument. (“Matt mastered so much of the raise his part an octave, just for a few poser there!” Haimovitz explained after traditional repertoire at such a young age,” Photograph by Harry DiOrio Harvard Magazine 25 MONTAGE David Sanford says, that now “he has an Extraterrestrial visi- appetite and a curiosity and a fire for new OPEN BOOK tors to Earth a million stu≠.”) years ago would have Cello and piano may seem a natural Stinging the found a planet teeming pairing, but Haimovitz has titled his new with 1,000 trillion social album Odd Couple. Because the piano be- creatures, from 20,000 longs to the percussion family and the Dinosaurs species—mostly insects. cello to the strings, he claims, their sound So report Bert Höll- qualities, or timbres, don’t match. Pianos dobler and Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor emeritus, in The Super- also have fixed tunings, whereas a cellist organism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies (W.W. Norton, $65). can slide or vibrate notes to produce a The social insects merit further study today, the authors say, for many reasons. more expressive intonation. But the biggest problem is that the piano’s mas- he ants, bees, wasps, and ter- shed light on how neurons of the brain sive sound can easily overwhelm the cello. mites are among the most so- might interact in the creation of mind. This wasn’t as much a challenge for Bach T cially advanced nonhuman organ- …The study of ants, President Lowell, of and Beethoven—earlier keyboard instru- isms of which we have knowledge. In Harvard University, said when he be- ments were softer—but in the recording biomass and impact on ecosystems, stowed an honorary degree on the studio in Montreal (where Haimovitz their colonies have been dominant ele- great myrmecologist William Morton teaches cello at McGill University), he Wheeler in the 1920s, has demon- and Woolf (herself a composer) had to strated that these insects, “like human tinker constantly with the sound controls beings, can create civilizations without to pick up the right balance. the use of reason.” All four pieces on Odd Couple are by con- The superorganisms are the clearest temporary composers and take di≠erent window through which scientists can wit- approaches to combining the two instru- ness the emergence of one level of bio- ments. In Cantos for Slava, by Augusta Read logical organization from another.This is Thomas, BF ’91, JF ’94, Haimovitz and his important, because almost all of modern pianist, Geo≠rey Burleson, both plucked biology consists of a process of reduction their strings, Haimovitz on the cello and of complex systems followed by synthe- Burleson inside the piano. Achieving bal- Weaver ants sis. During reductive ance in Sanford’s 22 Part 1, which Haimo- (Oecophylla research, the system vitz likened to a “rock ’n’ roll boxing smaragdina) is broken down into ring,” required furious bowing on the cooperate as they its constituent parts cello and digital amplification. The Cello construct their leaf-tent nests. and processes. When Sonata, op. 6, by Samuel Barber, D.Mus. they are well enough ’59, and the Sonata for Cello and Piano, by known, the parts and processes can be Elliott Carter ’30, D.Mus. ’70, complete pieced back together and their newly un- the disc; Haimovitz calls the Carter “one ments of most of the land habitats for derstood properties used to explain the of the most successful works in the genre, at least 50 million years. Social insect emergent properties of the complex sys- in the richness of each individual part and FROM THE BOOK species existed for more than an equiv- tem. Synthesis is in most cases far harder how the two come together” after each alent span of time previously, but were than reduction.…[Biologists are] still a instrument begins in “its own metric relatively much less common. Some of long way from understanding fully how world.” The music on Odd Couple, he says, the ants, in particular, were similar to molecules and organelles are assembled, is “maximalist”—dense and energetic, as those living today. It gives pleasure to arranged, and activated to create a com- opposed to the current trend among com- think that they stung or sprayed formic plete living cell…[and] from mastering posers toward more minimalist scores. acid on many a dinosaur that carelessly the many complex ways in which species Sharing new music is as important to trampled their nests. interact to create the higher-level pat- Haimovitz as recording it. While record- The modern insect societies have a terns. ing for Deutsche Grammophon, he felt vast amount to teach us today. They Social insects, in contrast, offer a far disconnected from the people buying his show how it is possible to “speak” in more accessible connection between albums. “My work was in the session, and complex messages with pheromones. two levels of biological organiza- then essentially I would turn my back,” he And they illustrate…how the division of tion.…Both of these levels, organism says. Running his own independent label, labor can be crafted with flexible behav- and colony, can be easily viewed and ex- Oxingale (www.oxingale.com), and sell- ior programs to achieve an optimal effi- perimentally manipulated. As we will ing CDs at his concerts has changed that. ciency of a working group. Their net- show…it is now possible to press far He tours from Thursday to Sunday nearly works of cooperating individuals have ahead in this fundamental enterprise of every week, and took his album Anthem (a suggested new designs in computers and biology. celebration of American composers that begins with a version of Jimi Hendrix’s 26 November - December 2008 MONTAGE “Star-Spangled Banner”) City punk-rock club CBGB. When the to all 50 states. “What American Music Center (a New York City keeps me going at this organization founded by Aaron Copland, stage is communicating D.Mus. ’61, among others) honored him as with audiences,” he says. a “Trailblazer,” Haimovitz took out his “And the fact that—as cello and played “Star-Spangled Banner” many composers as I’ve during his acceptance speech. “Freedom already played, as many of speech and freedom of expression are of these genres as I’ve responsible for the breadth and quality of infiltrated—I’m just con- music and art we make here in the U.S.,” tinuously amazed by he says. “Jimi Hendrix understood this how little I know.” better than most politicians of his time. Although he never He also had the talent to communicate lacked for critical praise this and connect with a generation. I was during his youth, Haim- just trying to channel a little piece of ovitz has also won hon- that.” ors for his more innova- In September, when Odd Couple came tive work. The American out (the octave change stayed in), the cel- Society of Composers, list and his pianist toured with a disc Authors, and Publishers jockey to perform composer Tod Ma- gave him the Concert chover’s VinylCello concerto, in which Music Award for “taking electronic sounds and turntables accom- Haimovitz plays a cello his brilliant and passion- pany Haimovitz. His goal in placing San- made by the famous ate performances to au- ford and Machover next to each other on Venetian craftsman Matteo Goffriller in the diences wherever they a program is to say, “Wow! It’s just as un- eighteenth century. assemble,” including the usual for me to be playing with a D.J. as it late, legendary New York is for me to be playing with piano.” COURTESY OF OXINGALE Photos in Thread Photorealistic fabric art that embraces both f-stops and embroidery by CRAIG LAMBERT rom a distance, they look like Behar has been crafting In Quarry framed four-by-six-inch color pho- these tiny gems (the largest is (1997), one tographs of landscapes and still-life seven inches by nine) since of Behar's rare "sculp- subjects—salt marshes, fountains, 1992, building on a prior tural" works, Frocks, squashes.

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