Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of 2007 April.

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 was a very exciting day for the Chicago double bass scene as Francois Rabbath made a rare trip to our Lake Michigan metropolis. Chicago Symphony member and DePaul University double bass instructor Rob Kassinger organized a master class with Francois, and at least 50 bass players and enthusiasts attended [...]

There have been some updates to the ‘For Sale‘ page on the blog here, including a very reasonably priced set of Pirastro Permanent strings. Check it out, and if you’ve got any gear to list, just drop me an e-mail (jsh177@yahoo.com).

My long-time friend Matt Heller just won a job in the Calgary Philharmonic. I think that this is fabulous news. It really couldn’t have happened to a nicer or more deserving guy. Matt has been very focused on obtaining an orchestral position for years, and it is great to see his goal [...]

I’d like to thank Jalopnik for linking to my exploding car story from today. They sent a huge influx of traffic over here a few months ago when I published the first part of my surreal tale, and the same thing has been happening today.

My traffic has been rising steadily every week since I [...]

In early 2004 my new Saturn abruptly caught fire as I was driving home from an orchestra rehearsal. I pulled the flaming carriage over, got my instrument out, and ran away just before it exploded. You can check out that part of the story here.
This was, to put it mildly, an unexpected [...]

I’ve been getting reports of mixed results with the little player buttons I have been using for the Virtual Master Class tracks and the Contrabass Conversations episodes. I am going to go ahead and make sure that there is a direct link that you can click for each file for all of the current [...]

Grant Park Symphony member and Northern Illinois University bass faculty member John Floeter sent me this great photo of the Illinois State University bass studio “hard at work” together. If you haven’t tried it before, this is actually a great way to catch a few winks between rehearsals or before a concert. After [...]

This is a video of Colombian virtuoso Juan Gregorio Baquero and the Bogotá´s Philharmonic Orquestra. Irwin Hoffman is the Conductor, and the production values for the concert are quite high. It looks like it was lifted off of Colombian television or a DVD. Great close-ups of the double bass and the orchestra.
This is the second [...]

I’d like to let Chicago-area folks know one more time about the master class that Francois Rabbath will be conducting at Symphony Center tomorrow at 1 p.m. Click here for more details. Hope to see you there!

 

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Episode 14 for Contrabass Conversations features the final part of our interview with John Grillo and a double bass recording from jazz artist Terry Plumeri. Enjoy!
CBC 14 show notes

Length: 29:23
e-mail: contrabassconversations@gmail.com
voicemail line: 206-666-6509
website: http://contrabassconversations.com
blog: http://doublebassblog.com
This episode features Part 3 of our interview with double bassist John Grillo. You can listen to the previous [...]