Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of 2007 August.

Before I get started on the blog entries for this week (regarding private studio teaching), I wanted to make sure I invited anyone in the Chicago area who is interested to my upcoming recital:

Dr. Phillip W. Serna – The Seventeenth-Century Lyra-Viol, a RecitalPhillip W. Serna, Tenor & Bass ViolOur Lady of Mercy Catholic Church701 [...]

This weekend you will be getting a chance to hear Colin Corner, section bassist for the Minnesota Orchestra, in a Contrabass Conversations interview. We will also be featuring double bass playing from JC Jones and Daniel Nix, so stay tuned for this new episode on Sunday morning!
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If you’re subscribed to the podcast, this video will be delivered to you later on today. This is an amazing off-the-cuff performance from Miloslav Gajdos playing and singing (both parts at the same time!) Mozart’s “Per Questa Bella Mano” on the double bass. He was experiencing jet lag and playing on a borrowed bass, [...]

Podcast – The Composer’s Datebook
In Association with the American Composers Forum

Podcast Host, John Zak
For Phillip’s recommendation for today, we have the American Public Media program the Composers Datebook. Composers Datebook, in association with the American Composers Forum, is a radio broadcast/ podcast hosted by John Zak is a daily two-minute program designed to inform [...]

Chicago Symphony member and Chicago Chamber Musicians bassist Brad Opland will be appearing on the Contrabass Conversations podcast in the next few weeks. We just did a great interview yesterday afternoon, and this will be going out on the program in early September. A member of the Chicago Symphony for over 20 years, [...]

I wrapped up an interview with Scott Rosenthal earlier this week for the Contrabass Conversations podcast. Scott is one of the major players for the Chicago theater scene, having performed in a huge number of productions such as The Producers, Ragtime, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera, Beauty and the Beast, Showboat, [...]

Check out this episode from NPR’s From The Top featuring the great Bela Fleck and a young bassist named Mike Thurber. Just visit this page and click the ‘Listen’ button at the top. I love From The Top. To me, it is one of the best examples of how to engage young [...]

Yesterday I created a Facebook group for the Contrabass Conversations podcast. These groups are an extremely cool way to share ideas, photos, videos, links, and the like with other group members, and if you’ve got anything that you want mentioned on the show (recitals, concerts, bass news, cool links) you can put it on [...]

This is a video of a section of my recital yesterday for the Silk Music Camp in Lisle, Illinois. I am doing a demonstration with the bass, and the first minute or so features me explaining some fundamentals of the bass. I’m basically improvising this demonstration as I go–I wasn’t sure of exactly [...]

In her recent post on the Cincinnati.com Classical Music Blog, Janelle Gelfand brought to my attention this recent article from Freep.com, an online component of the Detroit Free Press:
After 20 years of labor peace, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is in a showdown that threatens to derail the opening of the 2007-08 season.
Contract negotiations between [...]