Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of 2008 February.

Double bassist (and Contrabass Conversations guest) Jerry Fuller and Ars Antigua is being featured tomorrow on Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin. Details from Jerry follow:
On February 18 the popular classical music radio program Exploring Music with Bill [...]

 

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We’re wrapping up our interview with double bassist Peter Seymour this week on Contrabass Conversations. We began this interview on episode 53, so be sure to check this episode out if you missed it! Peter has performed for the New World Symphony and spent a season playing with the Cleveland Orchestra, and he [...]

This is a post from National Symphony Orchestra bassist Jeff Weisner. Jeff also teaches bass at The Peabody Institute in Baltimore and co-authors the blog PeabodyDoubleBass.  Click here for all of Jeff’s doublebassblog.org posts.
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I’m on the plane on the way back from our South Carolina Residency, which seemed to me to be [...]

Doublebassblog.org contributor Bill Harrison recently put out a new video demonstrating major triad fingerings on the double bass. Bill has made several instructional videos for jazz bassists in the past, and they are definitely worth checking out. Bill is the founder of PlayJazzNow.com, a company that specializes in downloadable play-along tracks for jazz [...]

I love The Onion (America’s Finest News Source), and I love cats (as you can see from my dozens of blogged cat videos here), so how could I resist this story?  This was forwarded to my by my good friend Tim Pearson:

Kitchen-Floor Conflict Intensifies As Rival House Cats Claim Same Empty Bag

MAPLEWOOD, MO—”It [...]

Asked by a double bassist who just played a shaky audition, one of the faculty members listening to this player passed along this bit of wisdom:

“Your audition was great….until you started to play the bass.”

Richard Davis and company will host the 15th Annual Conference for Young Bassists in Madison, Wisconsin the weekend of March 21-22, 2008.

Billed as an event for double bassists from ages 0-18, this year’s workshop features clinicians Richard Davis, Virginia Dixon, Peter Dominguez, Diana Gannett, Larry Hutchinson, Jerry Jemmott, John Kennedy, Bill Koehler, David Murray, [...]

Even in a ‘classic’ art form like music, one that existed well before the advent of electricity, we performers now completely and utterly depend on the power grid for our performances.  While hospitals and other such foundational services may have emergency generators, I’ve certainly never seen a concert hall with one.  When the power goes [...]

Lyric Opera of Chicago bassist Greg Sarchet joins his colleagues Andy Anderson  and Steve Lester as the double bass faculty of the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.  Greg is a former Contrabass Conversations guest (you can hear him on episodes 19 and 35) and has contributed many news items, videos, and other [...]

Have any choice quotes you’ve heard during your studies (or perhaps….[gulp]… made yourself as a teacher)?  I’ve got reams of them!
Here’s a perennial favorite.  I’m not going to mention who specifically I heard this from:
“I play bass like Ferrari.  You play like monkey with brain damage.”