Dan Carson plays The Elephant
The following link is a video of the latest Midwest Young Artists podcast, featuring my double bass student Dan Carson playing The Elephant with the chamber music group I Solisti. Enjoy!
Podcasting at the Chicago Bass Festival
While I always have to be a little careful not to overcommitt and schedule myself so heavily that I have no timeto enjoy the event, there will almost certainly be some podcasting happening at the Chicago Bass Festival this Sunday. At the very least, I’ll be recording the two lecture/Q&A sessions I’m doing (one on how to get into a top music school and one about developing audition chops of steel).
If you’re at the event on Sunday, come up and say hi! I’ll have some gear with me and will be perhaps doing some “man on the street” short hellos, so maybe you can say hi to the greater bass community and let podcast listeners know what you’re getting out of the festival.
Daxun Zhang master class 2/7/10
Here’s a master class from an awesome bassist: former CBC guest Daxun Zhang.
Event: Daxun Zhang Master Class
Start Time: Sunday, February 7 at 11:30am
End Time: Sunday, February 7 at 2:00pm
Where: The Cleveland Institute of Music – Mixon Hall
It’s being hosted by another former CBC guest: Cleveland Orchestra principal bass Max Dimoff. Check out their respective interviews below:
On Auditioning
Taking auditions is one of the most challenging yet pivotal aspects of a musicians’s life. Careers and made or broken every day on these small snaphots of a performer’s life. In fact, this is such a critital skill for every musician that I decided to do a clinic at the 2010 Chicago Bass Festival on this very topic.
I recently sat on an audition panel (something I’ve done frequently in the past), and I thought it might be instructive to put out the comments I wrote down for the candidates. These are all anonymous and randomized, and I think that they give a good impression of the type of comments that auditioners write down during this process. You’ll notice that the comments are, for the most part, short and to the point, and there’s a lot of repetition. You can quite easily tell who did well, who struggled, and who was somewhere in the middle. I offer this information up in the hope that readers will see how the auditioner’s thought process often works (many folks write comments like mine).
Audition comments for a recent panel on which I was sitting:
Candidate #1:
-good tone
-solid
-Glinka: some tone problems
-good intonation
Candidate #2:
-rougher sound
-good
-need more dynamics in Adams
-Russlan: not clear on 8ths
Candidate #3:
-needs to be louder for Adams
-missed notes
-not long enough in 9/4
-some rushing in Russlan
Candidate #4:
-problems
-?
Candidate #5:
-Stravinsky: slow – counting!
-Adams: good – not short enough or loud enough
-Glinka: some rushing
Candidate #6:
-Stravinsky: good
- Adams: well-learned
- some intonation and articulation inconsistencies
Candidate #7:
- nervous
- Stravinsky: too slow
- good character
- Adams: some problem shifts but good overall
- Russlan: rushing, bow out of control
- very musical
Candidate #8:
- Stravinsky: good
- Adams: missed notes, counting inaccurate at end
- Russlan: good! Nice job
- tone is not where it needs to be, but solid
-
Candidate #9:
- Stravinsky: good, could be bigger sound
- Adams: good intonation and articulation, some upbows inconsistent
- Glinka: good
Candidate #10:
- Stravinsky: good
- Adams: good
- Glinka: good
Candidate #11:
- Stravinsky: slow but solid
- Adams: not the right character, sounds like sightreading
- Glinka: sloppy, not the right bow stroke
Candidate #12:
- Stravinsky: wrong rhythm
- Adams: nice articulation, but I can’t hear the pitch
- Glinka: bow problems, can’t hear notes
Candidate #13:
- crooked bow
- Stravinsky: rhythm good but small sound
- Adams: too soft
- Glinka: bow problems
Candidate #14:
- Stravinsky: slow but good
- Adams: too long and soft but good intonation
- sounds like you have no rosin on your bow
Candidate #15:
- Stravinsky: good
- Adams: sounds like you don’t know the notes, wrong notes, wrong sound, needs to be closer to bridge
- bow out of control
Candidate #16:
- Stravinsky: good
- Adams: some missed notes, good otherwise
- Glinka: good
Candidate #17
- not making contact with string and bow
- missed notes
- Adams: wrong tempo and character, slow and soft, wrong notes
- Glinka: many different tempos, wrong style, bow control not there
Candidate #18:
- Stravinsky: good
- Adams: some missed notes, good otherwise
- Glinka: bow control lacking
Candidate #19:
- Stravinsky: slow but good character
- good audition, very musical
Candidate #20:
- Stravinsky: good
- Adams: good
- Glinka: good
Da Vinci Harpsichord Viola
This is super cool:
via Discovery Networks:
Da Vinci’s “Harpsichord Viola” has been assembled for the first time in 500 years in an exhibit at the Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York City. James Williams attended the premiere and took the instrument for a test spin.
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