Great chat with Robert Meyer and Jack Budrow last week
We hope that you all enjoyed the second half of our interview with double bass luthier Barrie Kolstein this past weekend. If you missed it, you can check it out on Barrie’s Contrabass Conversations page. You can download the episode, play it while you’re surfing online (click ‘play in popup’ and keep browsing online while you listen), or subscribe for free to the podcast (click here if you use iTunes and here for e-mail and other subscription methods).
We have also chatted with luthier Chris Threlkeld-Wiegand for the podcast earlier in March. Chris makes beautiful basses and extensions and does repair work from his shop in Iowa City. Check Chris out online at www.heartlandsbs.com. We also did an episode with Chicago-based luthier and retailer Steve Reinfranck for the podcast. Steve and I discussed the Chinese instrument market, Steve’s organization of a Gary Karr benefit concert a few years ago, and his private teaching studio.
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I also interviewed double bassist Robert Meyer for Contrabass Conversations last week. Robert has had a long and illustrious career on the double bass, working for over 50 years in most of the major orchestras in London (including the London Symphony, London Philharmonic, and BBC Symphony), as Principal Bass of the Vancouver Symphony, and has taught at the Universities of British Columbia and Victoria. He has also worked under conductors such as Furtwangler, de Sabata, von Karajan, Klemperer, Giulini, Bruno Walter, Koussevitsky, Stokowski, Rhozdesdensvky, Stravinsky, and Khatchaturian, and he was close friends with Benjamin Britten, having actually premiered several of Britten’s chamber operas. When Britten wrote works like Albert Herring, he had Robert in mind as his double bass musical model!
We’ll be releasing this interview in the next couple of weeks. It was a real pleasure to chat with Robert! Robert also maintains a blog called Musical Reminiscences that is filled with great stories from his career, advice for double bassists, and much more. Check it out–it’s a great read and full of fascinating material.
Robert has also recorded several videos relating stories, experiences, and observations. You can find many of them on YouTube (here’s a good page of them) or on his blog. In the following video, Robert discusses what separates the truly great conductors (and he’s worked with a lot of them!) from the rest of the herd:
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Co-host John Grillo and I also did a great interview with Michigan State University bass professor Jack Budrow last Friday. Jack has been a significant presence of the double bass scene for decades, having taught at Interlochen for the past 30 years, at Michigan State for the last 12 years, and having been Principal Bass of the North Carolina Symphony and a former member of the Houston Symphony and Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. Jack is a warm, funny, and articulate individual, and his love of the bass and of teaching shines through in everything he says. Folks will really enjoy this interview with Jack! We’ll release the first part of this interview on April 5, so stay tuned for it.
These conversations with double bass teachers, performers, and luthiers are an invaluable way to learn more about the instrument and our business, and they are a great way to get to know these influential figures better. Students and teachers out there will really enjoy hearing Jack’s thoughts and perspectives on music education, double bass teaching methods, setup and maintenance issues, methods of holding the instrument, surviving long rehearsals and performances, and much more.
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We’ll also be releasing the first episode of Eclectic Bass his week. This new offering from Contrabass Conversations highlights music from double bassists worldwide, and will prove to be a nice 20-30 minute complement to our interview episodes. We’ve got a huge wealth of double bass music in the Contrabass Conversations archives, and this new show provides a great way to highlight the vibrant contributions from the double bass community. This first episode will feature music from Frederick Charlton, Lila Horovitz, and Bill Koehler, and we’ll be releasing it mid-week, so stay tuned, and be sure to subscribe to the podcast (click here if you use iTunes and here for e-mail and other subscription methods) so that you don’t miss this new feature!
In search of double bass strings
Lyric Opera of Chicago bassist, former Contrabass Conversations guest, and faculty member at Northeastern Illinois University and the Chicago College of Performing Arts Greg Sarchet is helping to collect used strings for double bass master teacher and performer Miloslav Gajdos’ bass studio (see his videos on Contrabass Conversations here).
Greg writes:
Dear All-
Czech double bassist and composer Miloslav Gajdos has asked me to put out an all-points-bulletin for old (or new) bass strings for his conservatory.
I will be happy to act as an intermediary if anyone has some they would like to donate strings to him and his students. Email or call me if you want to assist.
E-mail Greg (scrtchbox at aol dot com) to help out, and check out Greg online here.
CBC 72: Barrie Kolstein interview 2
We’re wrapping up our chat with Barrie Kolstein this week on the Contrabass Conversations show. We began this interview on episode 70 of the program, and in it we discussed Barrie’s father Samuel Kolstein and how he got into the bow making business, the progression into the bass making business, and the development of the Kolstein line of products (including rosin, stings, and cases) that bassists worldwide use today.
Barrie discusses Kolstein rosin, challenges facing modern double bass retailers and luthiers, advice on buying a double bass, and how the business has changed in the past few decades. Visit the Kolstein shop online at www.kolstein.com, and check out our co-host John online at www.classicalmusicnews.tv. Enjoy!
FriendFeed and how I peruse the Internet
I’m definitely addicted to Twitter (you can find me at twitter.com/jasonheath). I use it all the time and have been doing so daily for the past year. There’s something about the simplicity of it (140 characters, that’s all you get) that appeals to me, forcing be to be pithy and focused, which is a good thing for me!
I follow a lot of people on Twitter, and I actually find a ton of interesting stories through it. The ability to insert links is very cool, and I have found myself both sharing a lot of cool stuff I find online through this and clicking on links from people that I regularly follow.
Recently, however, I have started using FriendFeed, and I am completely smitten. What a cool service! FriendFeed allows you to add all the various services you use and put out a feed that compiles everything you’re doing online, including blogging, podcasting. Twitter, Flickr, Netflix, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Google Reader (shared stories), and dozens of other services. You can also follow other people’s feeds, and they provide a list of interesting people you might want to follow to get started. This is a dynamite way to find cool stuff online, and it’s a great way to keep current with what your friends are doing.
You can check out my FriendFeed at friendfeed.com/jasonheath, or you can subscribe via RSS to my FriendFeed and follow along with all of my links, posts, and activities in your reader of choice. They also have a very cool Facebook application that allows you to sync up with your friends and have their feeds automatically added when they join FriendFeed.
There’s also a feature called ‘imaginary friends’ which initially seems goofy but is actually quite cool. You can add feeds from blogs you follow and build them into your overall FriendFeed experience, so you can follow people even if they haven’t set up an account on FriendFeed.
Mashable Conversations recently did an interview with FriendFeed co-founders Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor. Check it out here, and check out parent website mashable.com for more great coverage on social media.
By the way, if you use Twitter and really want to geek out, check out the Twitter Fan Wiki, where you can find cool services like:
- serendipiTwitterous – find links, movies and educational resources related to posts appearing on your friends timeline.
- Flitter: Flickr stream generated by the Twitter public timeline using this yahoo!pipe and rendered in vvvv.
- GeoTwitter – This mashup uses Google Maps API and Twitter API. The most recent updates are fetched from the public timeline and mapped once every minute.
- LOL Feeds – Mashing up LOL Cats and Twitter, etc.
…..and much more!
Hungarians bury a double bass to repent for their sins against the instrument
Now this is a great piece of bass trivia! Patty from oboeinsight recently posted this fascinating information on her blog:
(via My Wedding Favors Blog)
Every year for the past 100 years, Hungarians in the city of Roma would bury a double bass to signal the end of the wedding season and also would confess their sins that were committed against the instrument. Then they followed up with an all night party. A strange custom to be sure, but a custom nonetheless. Well 2008 saw that custom nixed from Hungary’s event calender. The bureaucrats in Hungary basically forgot to put it on the list of festivals that has been held every year on the first Thursday of every February.
It sounds like the removal of this festival from the 2008 calendar of events was an oversight, so I wonder if it will be back in 2009? If so, I’d sure love to get some video of this event.
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