Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

This brief video demonstrates the way that I record phone interviews along with my own voice, a method that is stable and produces a good audio product. This is harder than you might imagine! A lot of experimentation occurred before arriving at this setup, which may seem wacky but is actually quite [...]

Chicago Symphony bassist and active blogger Michael Hovnanian just put out a post recounting a highly wacky gig that he played with other members of his orchestra.  This gig (on Good Friday) happened to land on the day of a freak snow storm here in Chicago, with the metro area receiving 6-12 inches of [...]

 

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We’re chatting with Volkan Orhon, David Murray, Anthony Stoops, and Paul Sharpe on this week’s episode of Contrabass Conversations. Anthony Stoops was featured recently as an interview guest on the podcast, and we also featured Volkan playing one of Chris Threlkeld-Wiegand’s basses on our interview with this fine luthier.
In this interview, we chat [...]

After a lot of cutting and pasting, we’ve now got a complete alphabetical listing of all Contrabass Conversations guests available under doublebassblog.org/features/podcast-guests.  Check it out, and stay tuned for our Bad Boyz of Bass interview tomorrow.

Ever since the very first few episodes, the Contrabass Conversations podcast has featured interviews with and performances from leaders in the double bass world. While this remains the main focus of the podcast, we’ve certainly branched out into different territory in the past year, including:

Video Performances
Virtual Lessons
Excerpt Breakdowns
Exploring Chamber Music series
Story Time series

It’s now [...]

We’re going to be launching some new live blogging experiments here at doublebassblog.org.  This is something that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time, and I think that it really has enormous potential.
We’re going to start by just doing some live shows from time to time.  The first one will be at 9 a.m. [...]

We’ll be featuring an interview with David Murray, Volkan Orhon, Paul Sharpe, and Anthony Stoops on this weekend’s Contrabass Conversations episode.  These four bassists have been assembling from time to time as the Bad Boyz of Bass, and they are certainly an entertaining and engaging group of musicians!
Anthony Stoops was featured recently as an interview [...]

Doesn’t the expression on my face (below) make you curious what this video’s all about?  Check it out–notice how I put my hand up to shield my face as a car pulls into the spot next to me in the parking lot.  I guess that I didn’t want to look too crazy to the audience [...]

 

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This week, we’re featuring Barrie Kolstein on the Contrabass Conversations show. Barrie discusses his father Samuel Kolstein and how he got into the bow making business, the progression into the bass making business, and the development of the Kolstein line of products (including rosin, stings, and cases) that bassists worldwide use today.
Barrie [...]

We’re featuring Barrie Kolstein on Contrabass Conversations this week. One of the most prominent and influential figures in the double bass community, Barrie was a real treat to interview, and co-host John Grillo and I really had a blast chatting with him. In this interview, Barrie discusses his father Samuel Kolstein and how [...]