Violinist Gil Shaham to meld ancient Bach with modern video at Weill Hall - Santa Rosa Press Democrat
Violinist Gil Shaham is getting ready to play a concert with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, but all he can think about is his recent brush with basketball fame. “My 12-year-old is really into basketball, and we’re staying at a hotel with a basketball court,” he said in a phone interview. Shaham, one of the foremost violinists of our time, will be doing his own athletic moves Friday, March 27 at Weill Hall in a recital of all six of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. “What a world he (Bach) creates with just one violin,” said Shaham, who made his debut in Weill Hall last August with the National Symphony Orchestra,. The masterworks by Bach will be accompanied by a series of short films by New York video artist David Michalek, who is known for his large-scale outdoor installations, where he projects ultra-slow-motion films on giant screens in well-known venues... The set of six solo works, which were recorded by Shaham in 2014 and released earlier this month on his own Canary Classics label, has been performed for just the past 10 years by Shaham, although he has played them for the past 30 years. For inspiration, Shaham read a book entitled, “Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach” by two American musicologists, Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne (Indiana University Press, 2001). “It’s a very important book,” he said. Source: www.pressdemocrat.com
