Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

Here’s a great video (with high production values to boot!) of University of North Texas and Cleveland Institute double bass professor Jeff Bradetich performing the Prelude from the first Bach Cello Suite. Very cool. I hope that Jeff knows his stuff’s out there on YouTube–something tells me that “deathgrind” (the username of the person [...]

The dynamic mandolin/bass powerhouse of Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile return to Chicago this fall for a concert at the University of Chicago on October 24 at 7:30 p.m. Here’s a link to the University of Chicago performance series website section on the Edgar concerts this year: http://chicagopresents.uchicago.edu/series/edgarmeyer/
Thanks to University of Chicago student and [...]

Here’s another video (again courtesy of Italian bassist Vito Liuzzi) featuring double bass soloist extraordinaire Franco Petracchi performing “Alla Marcia” by Nino Rota (Divertimento Concertante) during a perfomance in Japan some years ago.

Vito also writes:
A lot of italian important composers have written for Maestro Petracchi a lot of music for double bass. I remember “Sconcerto”, [...]

This video (courtesy of Italian bassist Vito Liuzzi) features the incomparable bass virtuoso Franco Petracchi performing the Bottesini Tarantella on a hard-to-find documentary that RAI (Italian state television) did on this great artist:

Double bassist Vito Liuzzi sent me a link to this excellent performance of the Rossini Duetto featuring the incomparable bassist Franco Petracchi with Italian cellist Vittorio Ceccanti:

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 [...]