Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

Where would we be without double bass composers? These four individuals have made great strides in promoting the double bass and innovating musically. We have more composers in our Contrabass Conversations archives–just dig through and see who else strikes your fancy:
Peter Askim
Active as a composer, conductor and bassist, Peter Askim is the Music [...]

The wonderfully helpful oboist Darlene Marshall has just completed her transcription of our Contrabass Conversations interview with Anthony Stoops. It’s really great to be able to offer these episodes up in text form, and I can’t thank Darlene enough for her help with this project.
So far, we’ve got transcripts from our interview with Anthony [...]

Visitors to doublebassblog.org may notice that we’ve got a new ad for The American String Project in the sidebar, and I’d like to direct people’s attention to this new sponsor. This outstanding ensemble features chamber music works arranged to include double bass by Barry Lieberman. The former Assistant Principal Bass of the Los Angeles Philharmonic [...]

We have had the opportunity to feature some of the world’s best solo double bass talent on the podcast as well. Here are a few fan favorites–remember, we have many more in our Contrabass Conversations archives:
Gary Karr
Since his debut with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in 1962, Karr has performed as soloist [...]

Double bass blogger Cyndy sent me a link to a recent post of hers that features truly horrifying treatment of a double bass by a baggage handler. She was fortunate to capture this double bass beating on video–who knows how many times this kind of abuse happens with no documentation whatsoever.
In the video, this baggage [...]

The early music podcast ArsAntiguaPresents.com just released a new episode. This excellent monthly program (I help out on the tech side with this show) features period performances from a variety of instrumental combinations. Quite cool–check it out below:
click to listen (right-click and choose “save link as…” to download)
click to subscribe to ArsAntiguaPresents.com

(photo from the ArsAntiguaPresents.com [...]

After some time spent in Mexico, double bass luthier Martin Sheridan has relocated to Sycamore, Illinois (west of Elgin, Illinois, about 1 1/2 hours west of Chicago). Martin has worked extensively in Illinois and Iowa as a double bass luthier.
Martin writes:
I have arrived in Sycamore (just west of Elgin) and have brought my tools. Help [...]

Many of our Contrabass Conversations guests hold faculty positions at prominent universities. Actually, most (if not all) of the guests we’ve had on the program have done at least some university teaching, so this is not going to be a comprehensive list but rather a means to get you started learning more about some of [...]

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week, we’re featuring an interview with double bassist Barry Lieberman. The former Assistant Principal Bass of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Principal Bass of the Winnipeg Symphony, Barry now serves as co-director of The American String Project, an innovative string ensemble which features arrangements of string quartets for small string ensemble with double bass.
On [...]

In addition to featuring nearly 100 interviews with seasoned professional bassists on Contrabass Conversations, we have also released several innovative pedagogical resources which have proven to be quite popular. These types of projects are what makes this kind of content distribution (over the Internet, free of charge, accessible to anyone worldwide) extremely exciting and useful:

Orchestral [...]