Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

The following is a short excerpt from the E-Bass Line Newsletter from the International Society of Bassists. Receiving this newsletter each month is one of the many benefits for ISB members, including special rates on instrument insurance, the excellent journal Bass World, the paper edition of the Bass Line, and much more! Check out [...]

The following is a short excerpt from the E-Bass Line Newsletter from the International Society of Bassists. Receiving this newsletter each month is one of the many benefits for ISB members, including special rates on instrument insurance, the excellent journal Bass World, the paper edition of the Bass Line, and much more! Check out [...]

MYA Saxophone Quartet featured on From The TopThe What’s Cookin’ Saxophone Quartet, made up of Midwest Young Artists members Amanda Peterson, Mira DeJong, Kateri Tumminello, and Joshua Plotner, was recently featured of NPR’s program From The Top. I do a lot of work with this metropolitan Chicago program–I host their weekly podcast at WMYA.fm, and [...]

Double bassist Vito Liuzzi recently let me know about a new composition from Italian bassist and composer Leonardo Presicci. Vito writes:

LEONARDO PRESICCI from ITALY and his new composition : CROSS OVER BASS (HR) for db. and orchestra
Dear Jason,
I’m happy to present you the new composition by maestro LEONARDO PRESICCI
“CROSS OVER BASS” [...]

Here are a few cool items going on around the classical music blogosphere. Stay tuned later this week for some new articles and interesting items from yours truly. We’ve got all kinds of interesting projects percolating in the background…
Because Shut Up, That’s Why!
Drew McManus and I recently did a series of podcast episodes with Lyric [...]

I got this sad note from my double bass blogging colleague Riccardo Valsecchi. It sounds like Xbass.org (which recently launched a new video project called Xbass.tv) is reevaluating the viability of their project and may be ceasing operations in the near future.
Riccardo writes:
Dear double bass players and lovers,
My name is Riccardo Valsecchi and I’m [...]

I always enjoy seeing members of the online double bass community appear in print media. What we do here online has, I believe, just as much validity and potency (and has arguably surpassed print media in importance in recent years) as print media, and most of the material published here on doublebassblog.org actually reaches more [...]

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 [...]

Contrabass Conversations co-host John Grillo just put up a post highlighting Michael Tilson Thomas (John’s music director during his time in the New World Symphony) and the San Francisco Symphony. John writes:
The San Francisco Symphony led by music director Michael Tilson Thomas will be playing for the first time [...]

Drew McManus, the perceptive mind behind the great orchestra management blog Adaptistration and chief architect for the Inside the Arts blog network, recently appeared on WNYC’s Soundcheck alongside Norman Lebrecht, author of Who Killed Classical Music? and other such analytical works on the classical music world. Both McManus and Lebrecht offered their perspective on [...]