Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of 2007 January.

There is a new bass ensemble that formed recently here in Chicago. It is an extremely high quality quartet composed of four people that I consider good friends and colleagues. The members of the new Chicago Bass Ensemble include Jacque Harper, who I have known for 12 years and who has been [...]

Matt Heller just wrote a post about Yo-Yo Ma and his week as soloist with the New World Symphony. He also mentions first hearing Yo-Yo Ma with the Philadelphia Orchestra years ago. It is a very perceptive piece of prose–check it out!
It is great to see Matt writing again on his hella [...]

OK–this video is really astounding. It is long (12 minutes), and a little dry for the first seven minutes. But hang in there, because right at the seven minute mark the video goes from cheezy to possibly the greatest thing I have ever seen. Fast forward to the seven minute mark if [...]

I’d like to thank the people who have been leaving such great comments on my blog over the last few months. The number of comments has really stepped up, and I appreciate it. I love comments–to me, they are one of the things that make a blog really interesting. The discussion doesn’t [...]

This isn’t a big deal to anyone but me, but my URL doublebassblog.com finally got released from the screwed up morass I described earlier, so that will get you to my blog as well. I won’t be moving back to that URL anytime soon, but if you type it into your address bar it [...]

I got some great feedback from Minneapolis/St. Paul electric and double bassist Brian Roessler regarding my podcast Contrabass Conversations. Thanks, Brian! He has a great website with several videos of him playing various pieces, including some Rabbath music. Check him out at brianroessler.com.
His site is also a great example of what can [...]

Here is a great video of Edgar Meyer starting a tune with the group Strength in Numbers. Edgar usually plays pizzicato in the clips I have found before, but this tune features him playing an arco solo line to start it all. Note the fluid shifting technique and impeccable intonation–what a player!

People have been leaving some great leads on open source music notation software. Looking for an open source version of Finale or Sibelius is not as bleak as I thought. I have not had a chance to check out these leads yet, but check out the comments of my recent open source notation [...]

I just followed a link from oboeinsight to discover this surreal story:
A Vallejo man was severely burned after an apparent cell phone malfunction ignited his pants pocket and touched off a fire in his hotel room.
Luis Picaso, 59, suffered second- and third-degree burns over 50 percent of his body and is in critical condition at [...]

OK–I give up. Trying to use the new Google domain hosting feature I blogged about a couple of days ago has proven to be a disastrous idea. Big (BIG) mistake. This thing is one of the worst user experiences I have ever had, and I am a pretty patient guy in the [...]