Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of 2007 February.

I have seen the excellent Chicago jazz bassist Kelly Sill in action recently, and I have to say that I am quite impressed. Seeing Kelly reminded me of my student days at Northwestern University. I remember many performances with Kelly and former Northwestern University jazz faculty member Mike Kocour. Mike is [...]

What, exactly, is a “regional” orchestra? For the purposes of this article, regional orchestras will be defined as organizations that employ professional musicians but do not offer a salary and other benefits of full-time employment. The organizational structure is virtually identical to the full-time symphony orchestra and is quite different from the [...]

Here is an outstanding shot from the NASA website:
The caption reads:
Io is a colorful place. The closest large moon of Jupiter, Io has the most volcanic activity of any moon in the solar system with its surface being completely buried in volcanic lava every few thousand years. The black and red material corresponds to the [...]

I’ve been spending some time recently with violist Emmanuel Ban, and I thought I’d give a quick mention to Wellington String Ensembles, his Chicago-based string network. Check them out if you are looking for musicians for a wedding, reception, or other such event in the Chicago vicinity.

Here is a link to a video featuring University of North Texas double bass professor Jeff Bradetich demonstrating left hand techniques for the instrument. The video comes from the UNT website and is very informative. Check it out here.
For those of you unfamiliar with Jeff’s background, here is his bio. Click his [...]

I can’t remember what originally drew me to Dictionaraoke.org, but it is a really fun site and massively addictive. Featuring cheesy MIDI accompaniments and synthesized vocals for a ton of pop songs, you can literally lose hours hearing these fun renditions of tunes.
Check out ‘Take On Me’, the 80s classic by the band a-ha. [...]

Double bassist Brian Roessler recently sent me a link to this new double bass case design by Olivier Rabbath from New York weighs only 35 pounds and utilizes a suspender system to hold the bass in place. IT will cost you $4500, but it may save you a lot of flight headaches. Check [...]

My low-end friend Matt Heller (hellafrisch blog, New World Symphony) was recently featured in a New York Times article titled The Face-The-Music Academy by Daniel J. Wakin. This article is an in-depth look at Miami’s New World Symphony program, and it is a must-read for anyone who considers themselves a classical music fan.
Matt mentioned [...]

Here is a little more Bottesini (this time the La Sonnambula Variations) from the great Boguslaw Furtok. This is the complete rendition, and it lasts around nine minutes.

Episode 8 of Contrabass Conversations features the second part of our interview with double bassist Phillip W. Serna. We covered a lot of interesting topics in this interview, and I hope you’ll find it enjoyable. At the very end of the show I tacked on some of the worst instrumental playing I have [...]