Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

OK–maybe you actually don’t suck at using the image editing powerhouse that is Photoshop, but I’ll bet Donnie thinks you do anyway. Kind of like a sinister take on the old Jimmy Fallon tech support guy skits from Saturday Night Live,
Honestly, this set of videos (from My Own Damn Channel) cracks me up more [...]

The dynamic mandolin/bass powerhouse of Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile return to Chicago this fall for a concert at the University of Chicago on October 24 at 7:30 p.m. Here’s a link to the University of Chicago performance series website section on the Edgar concerts this year: http://chicagopresents.uchicago.edu/series/edgarmeyer/
Thanks to University of Chicago student and [...]

The wonderfully helpful bassist Satoru Tagawa just finished transcribing episode 20 of Contrabass Conversations, which featured co-host John Grillo and I interviewing Indiana University bass professor Lawrence Hurst. Check out the transcript here, and check out Satoru at www.myspace.com/eiahto38.

I got a principal bass spot in a local Chicagoland orchestra right after graduating from college. One of the side benefits of holding this position was having the opportunity to participate in the ensemble’s community outreach program. I’d already had quite a bit of experience doing outreach activities at this point, having participated in the [...]

I’ve been successfully resisting the urge to blog about cats for some time now (though you can find many a former cat post of mine–including videos of my kitties taking a stroller ride-under the cats category), but this post from gigglesugar was too much to resist.
Here’s a video of Lynea Lattanzio, a trained vet who [...]

As a creator of freely distributed Creative Commons content (on Contrabass Conversations as well as doublebassblog.org), I see YouTube, podcasting, social media, and other such distribution platforms as a huge and largely untapped resource for classical musicians. Legal questions concerting rebroadcasting content through these channels tends to muck up the works, making very few orchestras [...]

I’m up at Ravinia in Highland Park, Illinois (the summer home of the Chicago Symphony) playing a Labor Day Tschaikowsky concert. Guess what’s on the program? Nutcracker excerpts! Nooooo…
Winter after winter of driving to Milwaukee to play the Nutcracker has given me flashbacks, and I find myself instantly teleported to the freeway in the middle [...]

Here’s another video (again courtesy of Italian bassist Vito Liuzzi) featuring double bass soloist extraordinaire Franco Petracchi performing “Alla Marcia” by Nino Rota (Divertimento Concertante) during a perfomance in Japan some years ago.

Vito also writes:
A lot of italian important composers have written for Maestro Petracchi a lot of music for double bass. I remember “Sconcerto”, [...]

 

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We’re concluding our interview with double bass soloist and University of Texas-Austin bass professorDaXun Zhang today, as well as featuring more tracks from this stellar musician. Check out episode 92 for the first part of this interview.
Along with the conclusion of our interview, we’ll be featuring DaXun performing a very cool Chinese piece for bass [...]

Calgary Philharmonic bassist Matt Heller (a frequent subject of posts here at doublebassblog.org) recently put out an excellent audition preperation breakdown on his blog hellafrisch.blogspot.com. Matt is an excellent bassist and blogger (and a swell guy to boot–we’ve been friends for years) who was featured in the New York Times by columnist Dan Wakin while [...]