Soloist takes cello to exciting new places

While embarking on his “Bach Listening Tour” last year, in which he took the music of the Leipzig master to pop music clubs and other nontraditional venues for classical music, cellist Matt Haimovitz said his dream was to return to these places to play a program of solos by living American composers.

He’s realizing that dream this year with his 50-state “Anthem” tour, coinciding with the release of his new CD on the Oxingale label in collaboration with Vanguard-Artemis Classics. The results, heard Friday at Genghis Cohen, a restaurant with a small side room for live performance, are equally joyful and impressive but perhaps more risky.

Everyone knows Bach, and a case doesn’t have to be made for him. But most of the composers Haimovitz played are far less known. Two of the pieces were written just for the album, in response, moreover, to the tragic events of 9/11, with the attendant dangers of pretension or bathos.

The dangers, however, were avoided. In “9:11 Blues,” Toby Twining has written a very human and expressive work, one that uses microtones -- those notes in between the cracks of a keyboard -- to make the cello sound like a frayed-voice singer wailing in pain and protest.

David Sanford’s “Seventh Avenue Kaddish” achieved similar dignity and weight, though by more traditional, almost pictorially evocative means.

Still, the peak of the evening may have been Haimovitz’s galvanic re-creation of Jimi Hendrix’s performance of the National Anthem at Woodstock, which gives Haimovitz the title of his album and tour. It was, Haimovitz said from the small stage, a celebration of the freedoms enjoyed by Americans.

Powerful and interesting works by Lou Harrison, Osvaldo Golijov, Tod Machover, Robert Stern, Luna Pearl Woolf and, yes, Bach completed the program. Hearing a cello played with such fervor and commitment -- not to mention high artistry -- in a small venue is a priceless experience. Bring Haimovitz back soon.