Today is the two-year anniversary of my recital on the Karr-Koussevitzy bass. I had a real whirlwind of a week when doing that recital, putting on a student recital the previous day and getting packed up to head off to a chamber music festival in Door County, Wisconsin the following day.

624791592_e079d3ccd9.jpg

It’s amazing to think about all that’s happened in the last two years! I’d only just started this blog at that point, and I basically had my student lesson schedule, assignments, and a few scattered blog posts. 2200 blog posts, 100 podcast episodes, several publications (including my new book!), and a whole lot of cat videos later, I find myself wrapping up my Chicago activities and getting ready to take off for another year of Door County chamber music playing.

If you haven’t seen this recital in the past, here are a few short clips:

Recent News

Drew McManus in the Chicago Tribune – My fellow Inside the Arts blog compatriot Drew McManus was recently featured in the Chicago Tribune with his annual orchestra compensation reports. The long and short of it? Conductor compensation is unmistakably up. CHeck out the full Tribune story through the link above.

Matt Heller on the “crime” of gigging – Calgary Philharmonic bassist Matt Heller wrote a great follow-up post about my new series Instrumental Junkies. As with much of my blogging, I’ve been working on this series for quite some time, and I’ve got new installments coming out every week or so. There’s something about the warm weather (or maybe it’s just my lack of work in the summer) that makes me contemplate just why we musicians persist through hardship, inconvenience, and sketchy compensation. Matt describes his experience as a newly transplanted American and how some of his Canadian colleagues perceive his accepting various gigs.

Live performance from Contrabass Conversaions guest Bjorn Berkhout – Bass-friendly composer Bjorn Berkhout (check out his CBC interview here) will be putting on a live concert featuring two of his works at the Sherwood Conservatory of Music in downtown Chicago:

June 8, 3 pm – Sherwood Conservatory of Music

1312 South Michigan – Map to Sherwood

Cute Vintage Album Covers – The always excellent blog Dark Roasted Blend put out a hugely entertaining post of spectacularly amusing, strange, and horrifyingly bad vintage album covers recently. I’ve done a series of posts on bad album covers before, and I definitely get a kick out of this post!
Incidentally, I wrote a post last year for Dark Roasted Blend featuring the wacky world of automated musical instruments, and I’m in the process of kicking out another post on musical oddities for them, so stay tuned!

Justin Locke and Peter VS the Wolf – The always entertaining Justin Locke recently had his family concert Peter VS the Wolf put on in the Bahamas. I sure would have liked to have checked that out! Listen to Justin’s CBC interview here.

Here’s a recent shot from this Bahamian performance. Looks like quite a show:

pb.jpg

Bass News Right To Your Inbox!

Subscribe to get our weekly newsletter covering the double bass world.

Powered by ConvertKit