Violinist Gil Shaham to meld ancient Bach with modern video at Weill Hall

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. In fact, the star admits to being star struck.

“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. “And in walked Dirk Nowitzki, the star player of the Dallas Mavericks. My son got an autograph and a picture.”

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. It’s a kind of March Madness for string players.

“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 such as New York’s Lincoln Center and Trafalgar Square in London.

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.

“I definitely approach the pieces differently today, without question,” he said. “I see almost all of Bach’s music through the prism of dance and motion.”

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. “It’s amazing how encyclopedic his own knowledge was, because he was versed in all musical styles, ancient and current, and all the dances.”

When Shaham performed three of the solo works at London’s Wigmore Hall in 2009, Marc Bridle of The Opera Critic praised the violinist’s “lightness of touch throughout.”

“Short bow strokes, allied with an impeccably controlled bowing arm, gave the work a brilliant airiness in keeping with its dance-like motifs,” he wrote of the D-minor Partita. “The A-minor Sonata, in contrast, gave us something entirely different. A kaleidoscope of color … and that breathtaking depth of tone which Shaham seems alone in being able to generate.”

Shaham believes each of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas can stand on their own. After all, Bach himself transcribed single movements for other instruments, such as an organ fugue or the opening of Cantata No. 29.

But he added that an argument also can be made that for both the artist and the listener, there is enough variety within them to warrant playing them as a set.

“It’s an incredible journey,” Shaham said. “There is enough variety between all the works, with the various keys and meters and styles and dance types and musical forms … and, more tellingly, there is often dovetailing, where the end of one piece leads to the beginning of the next one.”

Shaham was first drawn to Michalek’s films through his most famous work, “Slowing Dancing,” which consists of video portraits of 43 dancers and choreographers from around the world that were filmed using a high-speed, high-definition camera. The videos last about 10 minutes but show only five seconds of action, making the movement barely perceptible.

It was Shaham’s idea to combine the films with his live performance, because he wanted to practice what he preaches.

“I’m always telling my kids that they should try something new and shouldn’t be afraid of branching out and maybe taking risks,” he said. “Then I realized that I rarely take risks.”

So he started talking to Michalek, who already was inspired by the solo Bach works, about how to enhance the listener’s experience by adding his original films.

“I just thought his work was so stunning and mesmerizing,” Shaham said. “The way that he uses time and light and shadow could easily lend itself to music.”

In the films, Michalek plays with the themes of birth, death and rebirth that Bach is believed to have built into each of the three Partita/Sonata couplings, as a reflection of the Christmas Story, the Passion and Pentecost.

“An argument can be made that these six pieces are a retelling of the Scriptures,” Shaham said. “Without making literal references, he is able, through the use of metaphor, to enhance the basic feeling of the music.”

Staff Writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com