Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

International Society of Bassists President and Ball State University Bass Professor Hans Sturm and I got together over the weekend and filmed a chat about the Rabbath left hand position technique. Hans does a great job explaining the concepts behind this technique, and I hope that folks out there will benefit from this [...]

We’ve featured the extraordinary double bass soloist Boguslaw Furtok many times on the blog in the past, and this clip (submitted by double bassist Ian Hallas ,who just performed the Bottesini Concerto with orchestra this week) is no exception.  Sha Ye (violin) and Boguslaw play a seven minute excerpt from this fun and virtuosic [...]

The amazing bassist Dean Ferrell will be doing a solo bass performance in Berlin on Tuesday, November 6th, and any bassists , students, teachers, and fans of amazing double bass performance art should consider attending if they can make it.
We blogged an hour-long video of Dean Ferrell performing as Captain Tobias Hume (footage from the [...]

International Society of Bassists President and Ball State University Bass Professor Hans Sturm and I got together over the weekend and filmed a chat about the Rabbath left hand position technique.  Hans does a great job explaining the concepts behind this technique, and I hope that folks out there will benefit from this video.  It [...]

Here’s a video of Gary Karr describing the history of the ‘Amati’ double bass. Gary talks about the origins of this bass (further research of the instrument has shown that it was not likely to have been made by the Amati brothers) and how it came to be in his possession.

If you’d like to [...]

Dominican Symphony Orchestra bassist Velibor Veljkovic sent me a message recently in search of more information about the Klauss Stoll and Jorg Baumann recording of the Bottesini Passione Amorosa.  It sounds like this CD is out of print, and he is having a hard time locating a copy of it.  Any information about this recording [...]

I’ve been playing this piece by Rabbath for many years, finding it extremely effective for many different kinds of concerts.  There are a lot of different ways to interpret this piece, and I find this rendition fresh and fun:

You can also hear me play this piece in a demonstration/recital (after a bit of chatter about [...]

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
Gomez, originally uploaded by dinda974.
Here’s a shot of the great Eddie Gomez at work on the instrument. Even seeing a photo of him on the bass gives me a hankering to [...]

This is the video version of my recent Story Time with Contrabass Conversations episode about cabs. It’s…well…..sort of a video, anyway. Check it out and see. I have taken various photos and put them together in a kind of slideshow/documentary/video podcast episode. If you’re a podcast subscriber (and if you’re not, [...]

Here’s a great video of University of Iowa double bass professor Vlkan Orhon performing Poucha Dass by François Rabbath.  I’ve always enjoyed playing this piece, and it’s great to get a chance to hear Volkan perform it.
Check out Volkan’s video performance of the Harbison Concerto here (click here to learn more about the history of [...]