The ISB mails its International Portrait Calendar to all current members with the fall issue of Bass World, and to new members throughout the year. That’s more than 3,000 calendars printed and mailed. At the bottom of each 2-month page there’s a banner space (dimensions 11 inches wide by 1 inch high) for an advertiser’s company name, logo and contact information. Imagine your company’s or special event’s contact information featured prominently for two months or longer, hanging on the walls of university and independent teaching studios, homes and college dorm rooms around the world!

There are only six 2012 ISB International Portrait Calendar advertising opportunities beginning at $500 U.S. for one two-month page. Click here to view sample calendar pages from 2011. You may book from one to six pages (different ads or the same banner) on a first-come, first-served basis. Thedeadline to book your calendar ad is September 15th or until all ad space is sold, whichever comes first. Artwork is due by October 1st. Contact the ISB today to reserve your ad space in the 2012 ISB International Portrait Calendar at info@ISBworldoffice.com, telephone 972/233-9107 ext. 204, or fax 972/490-4219.

Thank you for your support – past, present and future! Bass World would not be the great membership publication it has become without the continued participation of our advertisers.

General Information and Specs

• Black and white only, submit banner ad(s) in digital format via email as a print-version PDF (preferred) or high-resolution TIF or JPG file
• Rates are non-commissionable
• First-time advertisers must pay in full in advance
• Banner size is 11 inches wide by 1 inch tall
• Deadline to book banner ad is September 15th or until all space is sold

Advertising rates for one or more banner ads

• One banner ad                         $500 U.S.
• From 2 to 5 ads                       $450 U.S per banner ad
• Book entire calendar (6 ads)     $2,500 (up to 6 different banner ads or repeat your ads)

Questions? Email info@ISBworldoffice.com!

Following the interview, we feature two excerpts from a live performance of Greta’s Dream (right around the 57 minute point in the podcast if you want to jump right to them), and more information about this piece will be provided in the coming months.

Be sure to check out the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra Bass Quartet on Facebook–they’ve got a great page!

About Charles:

Charles DeRamus has a career that spans from North America to Scandinavia, where he is currently a member of the Gothenburg Symphony and has worked extensively with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic, Malmo? Symphony Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. In the United States he has performed, recorded and toured with the Atlanta Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Virginia Symphony, and the Colorado Music Festival. His studies include degrees from Indiana University and Rice University, after which he was a member of the New World Symphony and participated in numerous summer festivals including Tanglewood, Schleswig-Holstein, National Repertory Orchestra, Pacific Music Festival, and the National Orchestral Institute.

Equally at home in various musical venues, Charles has performed with the Houston Grand Opera, Atlanta Opera, Ohio Light Opera, NorrlandsOperan, Malmo? Opera, as well as the Dayton Bach Society, the contemporary ensemble “Black Box Band”, Sweden’s acclaimed new music ensemble Gageego, and the Persian/European influenced Rumi Ensemble. Recent solo engagements include a unique performance with the National Orchestra of Sweden for a concert celebrating newly naturalized Swedish citizens, as well as performances of Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango and Beethoven’s F Major Romance with the Eureka Symphony in the United States.

Charles is a dedicated teacher and currently serves on the faculties of the Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop and the Idyllwild Arts Summer Festival Programs. Previously he has served on the All-State at Interlochen and University of Michigan Summer Arts Institute faculties, as well as given masterclasses in Norway, Sweden, the United States, and at the Royal College of Music and Yehudi Menuhin School in England. As a composer/arranger, in the 2010/11 season Charles will celebrate the premier performances of “Greta’s Dream”, his newly written children’s concert for Double Bass Quartet and narrator. Following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps, Charles is the third generation bassist in his family.

For a list of presenters by the day for the 2011 ISB convention at San Francisco State University, June 6th-11th, click here (the young bassist program will be taught by many of these same presenters, YB schedule to be announced, for a general description of the young bassists program, click here.)

If you have not yet made your on-campus housing reservations, the deadline is May 1st. Click here for forms to fax or email in, to be received at the ISB office no later than Sunday, May 1st (form includes tips for finding off-campus housing), or you can register for housing online by clicking here. We will contact you if your first choice isn’t available. For basic information about on-campus stays, click here for a newsletter from San Francisco State University’s conference services department. Specific check-in and check-out instructions for SFSU on-campus housing will not be available to us until the first week of May. Wireless internet access will be available at various points on the campus.

For those traveling with your bass in a trunk, we have found a resource for leaving your bass trunk at the San Francisco Airport (SFO). Once you’ve claimed your baggage and trunk, go to the International Terminal departure level, near the United Airlines and on the way to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and look for the Airport Travel Agency office. With an advance registration by calling (650) 877-0422, or by emailing either cf.airport@gmail.com or linardmdavis@yahoo.com, you can store your trunk for $15 per day (without reservation, $20 per day.) The Airport Travel Agency is open 7 AM to 11 PM. Earlier pick up is possible if scheduled in advance for an additional charge. Allow for up to 15 minutes to pick up or drop off your trunk. Payment due by cash or with Visa, MC or AmEx when you drop off your trunk.

For shuttle transportation between the San Francisco Airport and San Francisco State University (the Holloway campus) or any of the hotels in the area, a special one-way rate of $15 per person plus gratuity (traveling without bass) is available with a reservation through Super Shuttle at this link. If you are traveling with your bass, either in a trunk or a bag, you must make an advance reservation by June 1st for a dedicated van by completing the form available at the same web page, and emailing to the dispatcher as instructed. The cost for a dedicated van one-way, which will hold up to 4 passengers and two basses in a trunk, is $100 plus gratuity. Questions? Email info@ISBworldoffice.com.

Stay tuned for more convention details!

2011 ISB Orchestra Competition
June 6, 2011 at the ISB
at San Francisco State University

The 2011 Judging Panel will be:

Shinji Eshima, San Francisco Opera Orchestra
Alexander Hanna, Principal, Detroit Symphony
Christopher Hanulik, Principal, Los Angeles Philharmonic
Joseph Kaufman, Assistant Principal, Seattle Symphony
Ju-Fang Liu, Principal, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra

1st Prize: Paid Week with the San Francisco Symphony
2nd Prize: $1000, sponsored by Orin O’Brien
3rd Prize: $750

New This Year: Preliminary Round CD due by March 15th

Repertoire for the preliminary CD will be:
One movement of unaccompanied Bach
Beethoven Symphony 5, 3rd mvt: beginning to 5 after [A] and Trio to 23 after [B]
Mozart Symphony 40, 1st mvt: 20 before [C] through 1 after [C]
Brahms Symphony 2, 1st mvt: [E] through [F]
Recordings are due in the ISB office by Monday, March 15, 2011 and will not be returned. All applicants advanced to the semi-final round will be notified by Thursday, April 1, 2011.

Repertoire for Semi-final and Final rounds will be selected by the judges from the following:
one movement of unaccompanied Bach
first movement of a standard bass concerto
And excerpts from the following works:
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5, 3rd mvt.
Brahms: Symphony No. 2, 1st mvt. and 4th mvt.
Mozart: Symphony No. 40, 1st mvt. and 4th mvt.
Schubert: Symphony No. 9 (“The Great”), Scherzo
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, [9] – 6 after [12], [40] – [41], 2 before [61] – [63], and 3 after [66] – [70]
Both live rounds will be held behind a screen. Please note: Competitors must play in orchestral tuning in all rounds of the competition.

For more information about the competition and the convention week, go to www.isbworldoffice.com

Beginning now and through the end of February, when you go to www.isbworldoffice.com/join_isb/join.html and join, renew or extend your membership online or by downloading an application and mailing it in postmarked by February 28th, you can choose one of these great CDs for your library:

Once you’ve joined, renewed or extended your membership either online or via regular mail, then all you have to do to claim your gift CD is send an email with your name, mailing address, and the first and second choices of the CD you’d like to have. Quantities are limited, so don’t wait long!

ISB Testimonials from 2011 Membership Drive Co-Chairs

John Clayton

“As a teenager, I was lucky enough to learn that bassists have a unique and supportive bond with each other that is not shared by players of any other instrument. The ISB is the lead organization we have that keeps this family connected throughout the world.” – John Clayton

Paul Ellison

“Maybe we should call it the ISBF, for Family? Where else are bassists of all stripes not only welcomed, but also valued, and for all the right reasons? There was no ISB for me as a student or young professional. Imagine when all the knowledge, awareness and shared musical experiences became readily available. I never have, nor would I miss an event, from Cincinnati, Chicago, Austin, LA, NYC, Bloomington, Houston, Iowa City and Kalamazoo, to Oklahoma City, State College, PA, and on to San Francisco in 2011. The truth is, there’s so much that goes on it’s impossible to take it all in. So okay, you catch up at the next convention! The ISB is our life’s blood. One principal of a major orchestra confided to me at his first ISB event, ‘I just had no idea! How could I have missed all this for so long? I’ll never miss another.’” – Paul Ellison

Membership is the life blood of any organization. If you’re a current member of the ISB, thank you! We are grateful to you for your continuing support – and we need your help! We challenge you to sign up a fellow bassist during our February membership drive. Members receive Bass World magazine and monthly e-newsletters, and are among the first to hear of double bass events and competitions. Ask a friend, colleague or student to go to www.isbworldoffice.com/join_isb/join.html and join online or download a membership application and mail it in.

Please forward mail a link to this post to all the bassists you know – and tell them John Clayton and Paul Ellison say, “What are you waiting for?”

Find ISB on Facebook

2010 Grammy nominations included a number of ISB members: Among the nominees are:
· Best Jazz Instrumental Album – The New Song and Dance, The Clayton Brothers (and John Clayton’s pianist son Gerald is also nominated for Best Instrumental Composition, Battle Circle, from the same album.)
· Best Contemporary Jazz Album – The Stanley Clarke Band (the self-titled album is also nominated in the Best Pop Instrumental Performance category)
· Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album – Pathways, The Dave Holland Octet
· Best Latin Jazz Album – Tango Grill, Pablo Aslan
· Best New Artist – Esperanza Spalding

Not a member of the ISB? Join today!

[This article is part of the larger “Year of Collaborative Music” initiative. For more information on the work that the International Society of Bassists is doing with YCM, click here.]

In the previous post on chamber music, I wrote about the wealth of chamber music with bass that exists and that rarely gets performed. For those of you who still haven’t visited the link, I’d urge you to check out Paul Nemith’s site for proof. But digging up lesser-known repertoire is only part of the “solution” for bassists who want to devote more time to small group chamber/collaborative music projects.

Another important option is to arrange existing music for an ensemble that includes bass. As Peter Seymour of Project Trio mentioned to me recently, this is a skill that all of us can develop. If you can read a score, then you can generally figure out what lines are most important, and can assign those to different instruments. It might not be easy at first, as there is a learning curve with orchestration and musical analysis, and just figuring out what sounds good. Like all skills, though, it gets easier the more you do it.

Peter should know, as there was practically no repertoire for a trio with flute, cello, and bass when Project Trio formed. With the looming deadline of their first concerts and recording project, the Project members had no choice but to learn to arrange and write for themselves, and it really paid off. After several years, they have amassed quite a repertoire for their group and are now performing full-time as an ensemble. [For more on Project Trio, as well as Sybarite5 and the Punch Brothers, you can read my article on the three groups in the January 2011 Issue of “Strings” magazine, or see part of the article here.]

One of the most successful and prolific arrangers—and composers—of chamber music for the bass is Frank Proto, whose Liben Music catalog is filled with well-crafted chamber music works with bass. Proto’s own compositions have made a huge impact on the current bass repertoire, but the impact of his arrangements have not been small, either, and have opened up a great deal of “non-bass” music to those of us who don’t have his arranging skills. I was curious to know how Frank got involved in all of this, and asked him about it earlier this year when YCM started. The following is his story, which I found very instructive in terms of how one can start to do arrangements in a direct, no-fuss manner.

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Frank Proto: I joined the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 1966. Whenever we went on tour I used to haunt the music shops for any music involving the bass and I came up with some chamber pieces by composers that I’d never heard of. When we’d return, I’d get a group together to play the pieces that I’d purchased to see what they sounded like. Most of the time we struck out, but a violinist, violist, and I decided to get together one day and play some standard string trio literature with me playing the cello part on the bass. I’d improvise octave changes on the fly and the whole thing would be very low-pressure—just for fun. After a while, they decided that the bass wasn’t so bad in that setting and we decided to prepare a little concert.

We worked a bit more seriously on several pieces and gave a concert, which was well received. I think we played a Haydn trio, some Corelli trios, and a couple of early twentieth century German trios—all stuff written for cello. We talked about doing another concert and I said that we really need something that’s originally for the bass; we’re always stealing from the cello! They agreed and we all looked around. We found a couple of Skorzeny trios that were fun to read but not something we really wanted to perform. So I “volunteered” to write us a piece, and the “Trio for Violin, Viola and Bass” was born.

At the same time we were playing more and more of the standard literature: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, etc. and really enjoying it. I thought that the stuff sounded terrific with the bass playing the cello part and thought that other bassists would enjoy the experience too, so I made editions and published them.

Bassists have traditionally missed out on the meat and potato stuff of the nineteenth century and here’s a way to remedy that situation. They don’t have to even play the music in public if they’re afraid of being criticized for playing transcriptions. Reading through the pieces with a violinist and violist just for fun is a great experience!

The same thing happened with the duos. I’d get together with a violinist and we’d read through some literature that was written for violin and viola, or cello or two violins—whatever. Again, I’d make octave adjustments on the fly. We went the same route: performed some concerts and gradually got more serious about it. It turned out that the violinist also played dynamite viola so she started playing the violin parts on the viola, making octave adjustments on the fly. We discovered that the bass and viola really blended well together and did a couple of concerts and even made an album of some of the works. The Gliere was always a favorite and has remained so for 30 years now. Of course, I couldn’t leave it there, so I wrote us some pieces to play and record, too. We still do this today, and we recently released a CD with a new Duo (no. 2) for violin and bass and a new duo for viola and bass.

Arranging chamber pieces so that the bass can participate should not be a big production. Most eighteenth century and quite a bit of nineteenth century cello parts can be played simply by adjusting the octaves. With just a bit of experience, the bassist should be able to do this on the fly. What helps—and here comes a “chicken and egg” problem—is that “musical” chops become as important as the “technical” ones. And how do we improve our musical chops? By doing more of this kind of playing. And if we do more of this kind of playing? We improve our musical chops! Of course it might be difficult at first, especially if one is sight reading, but the more one sight reads the better sight reader one becomes (another chicken and egg.)

To some, what I’m talking about is heresy, so I’ll make it even nicer by saying that when you make changes to accommodate the bass you not only mess with octave transpositions, but in some cases you even have to (gulp!) change actual notes. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing chord inversions, but double stops and chords have to be adjusted too. This is not about making a note perfect urtext or a “historical” edition. This is about having some fun playing some great tunes. And besides, if you want to play them in public for some human beings, that’s OK, too!

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Thanks to Frank Proto for sharing his thoughts on all of this. In the next post on chamber music, I’ll be discussing bassists who have taken the step of forming their own groups so that they have a dedicated ensemble where they can perform chamber music. If any of you have a favorite group (octet or smaller), particularly a lesser-known one, please let me know about them: info@jeremykurtz.com

Guidelines and entry forms for the 2011 ISB Double Bass Competition, with divisions for jazz, solo, orchestra and ages 15-18 and 14 and under, are available at http://www.isbworldoffice.com/competitions/performance.html.

Guidelines and entry forms for the 2011 ISB Maker’s are available at http://www.isbworldoffice.com/competitions/luthier.html.

Make plans to celebrate the Summer of Bass Love at the 2011 ISB Convention, June 6-11, at San Francisco State University. Stay tuned for details and mark your calendars!

TUESDAY: July 20th: 4:00 p.m. (check in 3:00 p.m.) Sonia Ray: Brazil
WEDNESDAY: July 21st: 1:30 (check in 1:00 p.m.) Diana Gannett: Michigan
THURSDAY: July 22st: 1:30 p.m. (check in 1:00) Lu Yuan: China
FRIDAY : July 23rd 2:00 p.m. (check in 1:00) Jason Heath: Chicago
SATURDAY: July 24th 11:30 a.m. (check in 11:00) Michael Klinghofer: Israel

What a cool idea to incorporate this into a bass camp! We did some live blogging and virtual master classes for the 2009 International Society of Bassists Convention, but if the ambition of these sessions is any indicator, we’ll be having a whole lot more of this at the 2011 convention in San Francisco.

The Golden Gate Bass Camp is a very cool event, and if you’d like to learn more about it (or about Barry Green, the director for the camp), check out the interview with Barry Green that I did for Contrabass Conversations earlier this year. While you’re at it, check out this mini-episode with Barry covering some details about the 2011 ISB convention.