Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

Double bass blogger Cyndy sent me a link to a recent post of hers that features truly horrifying treatment of a double bass by a baggage handler. She was fortunate to capture this double bass beating on video–who knows how many times this kind of abuse happens with no documentation whatsoever.
In the video, this baggage [...]

 

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We’re featuring Gary Karr, one of the all-time most influential double bassists, on Contrabass Conversations today. Hearing Gary Karr on record was a defining experience for me in my youth (as was the case for bassists worldwide), and hearing him live remains one of my most memorable double bass performances of all time.
The complete audio [...]

Full Disclosure: The bow in this video was given to me as a gift from Steve at The String Emporium. This is a comparison between my Bernd Dölling bow and a carbon fiber Finale bow–I just want to make it clear up front where I got the bow from for full and fair disclosure. The [...]

San Diego Symphony Principal Bassist Jeremy Kurtz forwarded some links to new videos of Edgar Meyer live in concert with mandolin player Chris Thile. These videos have been popping up on YouTube as this smokin’ duo tours the United States. If you get a chance, I’d highly recommend checking these guys out:

We’ve got a bunch of interesting links for you this Friday! First, we’ll be featuring Pat Metheny bassist Steve Rodby on this week’s Contrabass Conversations episode. This interview, which is conducted by special host Kells Nollenberger (from the Jazz Exchange podcast), was initiated on episode 58 of the podcast.

The Grillo Grape
My blogging colleague and frequent [...]

Here’s another instructional double bass video from www.mucony.com, this time featuring Manhattan School of Music bass instructor Jay Anderson teaching a student.

Last week we featured a video of Metropolitan Orchestra Principal Bass Tim Cobb working with New World Bassist and Eastman graduate Matt Abramo on the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40.  Check it out here if you missed it.
This week, we’re featuring another video of Tim teaching bass, this time covering the first movement [...]

My good friend Andy Giller (a former New World Symphony member) forwarded this link of Steve Metcalf rehearsing the Bottesini Concerto with his local youth orchestra. The orchestra sounds like you’d expect from a high school group in the early stages of putting together this piece (not that I’m ripping on them at all–they’re [...]

Bassist Jon Stefaniak recently forwarded a link to me featuring this excerpt of a video lesson with Metropolitan Orchestra Principal Bass Tim Cobb.  Tim teaches a bass student (likely a Juilliard student, though this is not specified in the video notes) the primary first movement audition lick from Mozart’s Symphony No. 40.

The entire video [...]

Here’s a video of a very young Taiwanese bassist playing her heart out on the Dragonetti Concerto mvt 3.  Very impressive for a 13-year-old, and a very cute video to boot!  There’s a bit of an introduction before the performance, so give it about 30 seconds or so.

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