Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

August 6th will mark the launch of what promises to be a very interesting new resource for jazz double bassists. JazzDoubleBass.com promises to:

provide a meeting place for exchanges of opinions, ideas and material;
provide an educational resource for all levels of Jazz Double Bassist;
help to maintain and widen interest in Jazz Double Bass

Those sound [...]

I just completed an excellent interview with Time for Three bassist Ranaan Meyer. John Grillo (a Contrabass Conversations regular) and I co-interviewed Ranaan, and you can expect the first part of this interview on next week’s podcast.
Ranaan is well-versed in classical, bluegrass, and jazz stylings as well as being a talented composer, and [...]

The Creole Quartet plays a little jazz on the Heart of Wales line in this photo en route from Swansea to Shrewsbury:
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The great Charles Mingus playing with the bow at a jazz festival. Note the lion’s head scroll on this bass. Anyone know who made this bass?
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Previous bass shots of the day - 1 2 3 4 5

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Bassist and PlayJazzNow.com founder Bill Harrison just started a blog called Jazz Underneath, and it is already turning into quite a resource. One of his recent posts highlights beautiful jazz-themed paintings by New Orleans painter Ann deLorge. The work to the left is called Jazz in Red.
Visit Bill’s blog post for more of these [...]

Just what the world needs…….more smooth jazz. How about some Yanni DVDs and Kenny G albums while we’re at it?
Milwaukee loses classical music radio to fill void left by station shuffling
Classical music disappeared from Milwaukee radio today as WFMR-FM (106.9) flipped to smooth jazz.
It’s part of a chain reaction that started with WKTI-FM (94.5) [...]

 

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This week’s Contrabass Conversations episode features an interview with and music from Chicago Symphony bassist Rob Kassinger. Rob’s musical interests span many genres and include both the electric bass and the double bass. You will learn about Rob’s early years on the bass and how working in jazz and rock settings led to [...]

Here is a video of the late jazz giant Ray Brown playing some solo bass on ‘Black Orpheus’ during his 75th birthday celebration concert. George Fludas plays drums on this high quality (both in terms of bass playing and production value) video.

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Great Ray [...]

So where do we go from here? Do we all just turn in our instruments and quit this miserable business? Not me, and not you either, I imagine. We musicians know the value of what we do. We know that our art can change lives, create happiness, inspire greatness in others, [...]

Here’s a video of jazz bass giant Eddie Gomez taking an extended solo. Not sure what program this was pulled from, but it’s great to both hear and see Eddie play.

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