Matt Haimovitz with Geoff Burleson and DJ Olive - Nov 6 in Montreal!

CBC/McGill Presents

MATT HAIMOVITZ, GEOFFREY BURLESON and DJ OLIVE

A Celebration of an "Odd Couple": Duos for Cello & Piano by Beethoven and Elliot Carter and for Cello & Turntables by Tod Machover and Montreal composer Nicole Lizˆ©e with the world premiere of "Bookburners" for Cello and DJ

Pollack Hall in Montreal, Thursday, November 6 @ 7:30pm

"Odd Couple" CD in stores November 4 on Oxingale Records

For Immediate Release, October 8, 2008 ’Ķ With a cutting-edge program already lauded by the press in Washington DC, Boston and across the US on NPR's All Things Considered, cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Geoffrey Burleson bring "Odd Couple" to Montreal's Pollack Hall on Thursday, November 6^th at 7:30pm, featuring special guest DJ Olive. The following night, November 7^th, Haimovitz, Burleson and DJ Olive take their Montreal set list to Wakefield, Quebec's Black Sheep Inn, then on to New York's downtown multi-media art cabaret space, Le Poisson Rouge, on November 13^th.

The Montreal concert also launches the "Odd Couple" CD, to be released in Canada on November 4^th on Oxingale Records. "Odd Couple" explores the defiant individuality between cello and piano. With the addition of DJ, Haimovitz says, "I'd like to experience and illustrate that it is just as odd for a cellist to be performing with a pianist as with a turntablist." "Odd Couple" includes David Sanford's funk-driven 22 Part I, Augusta Read Thomas's Cantos for Slava ’Äì both heard in their world premiere recordings - alongside Samuel Barber's neo-Romantic classic, Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 6 and Elliot Carter's landmark Sonata for Cello and Piano, in honour of the Carter centennial year.

"Haimovitz brought his prodigious technique and unsparing advocacy of the modern cello repertoire," said The Washington Post following an "Odd Couple" recital last month, "Haimovitz was emotive and dramatic by turns, with Burleson's piquancy and poetry blending beautifully." Following Boston's Ditson Music Festival, The Boston Phoenix called Tod Machover's VinylCello (2007), also planned for Pollack Hall, "exciting and very beautiful." Haimovitz and Burleson go back to the origin of genre with Beethoven's Sonata Op. 102 No. 2, a gateway into the composer's late style. DJ Olive and Haimovitz have collaborated a number of times over the last several years; in their attempt to establish the new genre of chamber music for cello and turntables, the concert will also feature a new work for cello and DJ by Montrealer Nicole Lizˆ©e, commissioned especially for the occasion by the CBC.

The improvisation skills of all three musicians will also be on display as they create improvised interludes between the composed works bridging the various styles further giving new context to established works, and poking wholes in the predictable routine of the concert experience.

A professor at McGill University's Schulich School of Music, Haimovitz is heard frequently in Montreal this season, including the Brahms Double Concerto with violinist Ida Haendel and the McGill Symphony (Pollack Hall, October 18 & 19); Luna Pearl Woolf's Aprˆ®s Moi Le Deluge with the McGill Chamber Singers (Pollack Hall, December 2) and Montreal's MusiMarch (Redpath Hall, March 5-7). The season culminates with a brand new cello concerto from Quebec composer Denis Bouliane for Haimovitz, the Montreal Symphony, and conducted by Kent Nagano in the final concert of the OSM season (May 26 & 28).

Matt Haimovitz has also recently released a new recording of J.S Bach's Goldberg Variations for String Trio (October 2 on Oxingale Records) with McGill colleagues, violinist Jonathan Crow and violist Douglas McNabney. For more information see: www.oxingale.com.

CBC/McGill presents Matt Haimovitz, Geoffrey Burleson & DJ Olive

Thursday, November 6 @ 7:30pm Pollack Hall, 555 Sherbrooke Street West

$15 ($10 students and seniors) Information: 514-398-4547