Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of 2007 January.

In this second installment of my series on professional freelance life as a musician, I would like to offer some commentary on trends that I see in the world of professional classical music performance. This installment of the series is geared toward orchestral performance. Other musicians, educators, and industry professionals may find [...]

Not musical, not educational–it’s a monkey riding a dog. I’ve heard from several people that this is not a fake:

Taiwanese bassist Mark Lock just got in touch with me. He has started a double bass blog, and it contains some really excellent writing. He also said some really nice things about my blog. Thanks a lot, Mark!
You can find his blog Firebird Winters in my bass blogroll over on the sidebar [...]

Bill Harris from Making Sense With Facilitated Systems linked to me in a recent post regarding the Visual Acoustics tool I recently blogged about. Thanks, Bill!

Guanaco recently linked to me in a post on Cellomania. I had not discovered this blog before, but it is really an excellent read. The author lives in Alaska and recently started learning to play the cello. This blog documents the experience of learning to play this instrument, and it is a [...]

Check out this photo of the founder of the New York Philharmonic. Ureli Corelli Hill founded the orchestra in 1842 as the Philharmonic Society. This was the third Philharmonic on American soil since 1799, and this ensemble (later renamed the New York Philharmonic) remains the oldest active symphony orchestra in the United States.

Read [...]

Drew McManus wrote a recent post about a pair of articles he edited for Jonathan Boen, Principal Horn for the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The concerto was commissioned from Jan Bach, and the articles (available on Polyphonic.org) chronicle Jonathan’s experiences with the entire commissioning, rehearsing, performing, and recording process. It is an interesting [...]

A blog post from Somewhat Frank alerted me to this cool new service by a Chicago-based startup. Currently available only in Chicago (yay) and Philadelphia, ParkWhiz is essentially Google for parking spots in Chicago. Type where you want to look for parking and it will pull up an extensive and detailed list on [...]

There is an interesting recent article from eWeek.com describing how as classic journalistic integrity and ethical principles are being adopted (or not adopted in some cases) by bloggers. According to a recent Steven Vaughan-Nichols column, several bloggers who wrote about Microsoft products received “Christmas gifts” of Acer Ferrari laptops valued at $2,299. Both [...]

Yesterday I launched episode one of Contrabass Conversations. This is a project I have been planning for a long time. It will be a weekly 20-30 minute podcast devoted to all aspects of the double bass. Episodes will be released each Monday. Visit contrabassconversations.com for all information about this podcast.
My plan [...]