Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of 2007 January.

This video combines three of my favorite things–monkeys, cats, and chickens. Watch as the monkey keeps the chicken from messing with the kitten. Cute, funny, and sweet. The soundtrack is a nice song titled “J’Taime”, and it was performed by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg.

 

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I had the great pleasure recently of doing an interview with Lyric Opera of Chicago and Grant Park Symphony Orchestra bassist Andrew Anderson. Andy gave a great interview on a variety of subjects.
In this first part of the interview we discuss Andy’s early years in music, the schools he attended, the type of [...]

I had somebody recently point out that they couldn’t get Contrabass Conversations to load in Internet Explorer. I got on the computer and realized to my horror that they were right. It also wouldn’t work in Safari. I got into the code and realized what I’d done wrong, and it works fine [...]

I am really into podcasting, both as a listener and as a creator. I subscribe to at least 50 different podcasts covering a ton of different subjects, and I figured that it would be fun to share a random sampling of the podcasts that I have found interesting. Every week or so, I [...]

I just finished reading Matt Heller’s recent post on fingerings and score study for the double bass, and he makes some interesting points. Often what one hears from a coach in a setting like the New World Symphony (where Matt currently plays), the Civic Orchestra of Chicago (where Matt and I used to both [...]

Matt Wengerd (104 Weeks) recently wrote a post detailing his trip to the International Association of Jazz Educators conference in New York City earlier this month. He’s got a great description of his experiences as a representative for the University of South Florida jazz program. Check out his IAJE post here.
Among the double [...]

This video was sent to me by my former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater student Justin Cormia. He knows of my fondness for the small furry felines. My cats wouldn’t enjoy this, but the cat in this video certainly does:

Michael Hovnanian just did a post about some fingering options for the ‘Trout’ Quintet. He mentions not often using the A harmonic on the D string in passage work (sorry, non-bass folks–click the Cats tab if your eyes are glazing over), and he cites one of the Ein Heldenleben arpeggios as another example of [...]

If readers have recordings of themselves that they would like to have played on Contrabass Conversations, please send them to me! I am always looking for more content for the show, and including reader submissions is one of the things I’d like to do. If you have some recordings of a recital [...]

Over the summer I applied for a professional blogging position with an internet media company. I made the short list but didn’t get the gig, which is probably a good thing in hindsight. I have no idea how I would have been able to keep up the time commitment this job would have [...]