Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

The class glances uneasily at the clock as it slowly ticks:
1:13…..1:14…..1:15….
Suddenly, the professor bursts in, shirt rumpled and tie caught within the jumbled stack of file folders, books, and binders he clasps in his arms.
“Hi class, sorry sorry sorry…um, how’s everybody this Tuesday..er, Wednesday. Sorry, sorry, let me just get things…. set up… uh…. [...]

Houston Symphony Principal Bass Tim Pitts will be teaching at the Beijing Music Festival this summer (which will actually be held in Shanghai this year to avoid the Olympics). San Diego Principal Bass (and former Tim Pitts student) Jeremy Kurtz provides the following details:

…my former teacher, Tim Pitts, is going [...]

The following is a guest post from Double Bass Blog contributor Phillip W. Serna. Check out Phillip’s recitals and interviews on his Contrabass Conversations page, and visit him online at http://www.phillipwserna.com/. Enjoy!
Contrabass Conversations and the Double Bass Blog are continues is series on early bass performers. It will highlight many different perspectives on early bass/ [...]

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune (Sunday, April 20, 2008 by Howard Reich) on the dramatic increase in music school funding caught my eye over the weekend. Several prominent music schools have new facilities either recently completed or in the planning stages, and the figures are pretty significant:

$22 million - Oberlin Conservatory [...]

The following is a guest post from Double Bass Blog contributor Phillip W. Serna. Check out Phillip’s recitals and interviews on his Contrabass Conversations page, and visit him online at http://www.phillipwserna.com/. Enjoy!
___________
Our next guest in our early music interview series is Richard Myron. We hope that you will enjoy these interviews and glean a [...]

Musicians reading this blog are likely to be familiar with the revolutionary Venezuelan music program El Sistema.  Started in 1975 by José Antonio Abreu, El Sistema has survived eight separate Venezuelan governments (not simply new presidents, but actual governments).  Adaptistration blogger (and fellow Inside The Arts network member) Drew McManus wrote a four-part series ([1] [2] [3] [4]) [...]

Post by Phillip Serna - www.phillipwserna.com
______________

Thomastik Infeld Gessellschaft announces Bass Encounters 2008 in Vienna Austria:
Please allow us to cordially inform you about an exceptional double bass festival taking place in Vienna, Austria: Bass Encounters 2008!

Great players of all music genres (jazz, classic, contemporary) will meet at the Porgy & Bess jazzclub (Riemergasse 11, A-1010 [...]

Post by Phillip Serna - www.phillipwserna.com
______________
Many apologies to blog readers in recent delays to get out segments in the Early Bass Series. I have been working on a large project featuring the achievements of Viennese double bassist and pedagogue Alfred Planyavsky.
For information on the Viennese Double Bass Archive, visit James Barkett & Jerry Fuller’s coverage [...]

We hope you all enjoyed our first episode of the all-music show Eclectic Bass, our latest offering from the Contrabass Conversations podcast network. If you missed it, you can find the first episode here, and stay tuned for more episodes from this series in the very near future.
Along with Exploring Chamber Music, our series [...]

I had a chance this past Saturday (March 1, 2008) to watch a master class hosted by Northwestern University double bass professor Peter Lloyd (fourth from right) featuring longtime Chicago Symphony Principal Bass Joe Guastafeste (pictured here in the center of the group).

Joe has served as Principal Bass of the Chicago Symphony since 1961, serving [...]