Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

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Prompted by a recent listener question on Contrabass Conversations, double bassist Phillip Serna wrote in with some notes from a technique class he recently gave on trilling. I thought that it would prove to be interesting reading for many string players out there. Enjoy!
Discussion on Trills from Valparaiso University - Double Bass Faculty - [...]

My recent tale of a colleague who mistakenly left his instrument 250 miles south of his gig definitely struck a chord with many readers. Here are some of the great comments relating similar panicky tales:
Darlene writes:
I just played a concert yesterday that was held at a high school about 1/2 hour from where I [...]

You’d think that it would be virtually impossible to forget your instrument when heading off for a concert, yet many musicians have found themselves halfway to a gig when their eyes suddenly widen and they whirl around in the car, breath catching in their throat, wondering if they really remembered to put their violin, clarinet, [...]

 

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We’re featuring an interview with jazz bassist Rufus Reid on this week’s episode of Contrabass Conversations. This interview was conducted by guest host Win Hinkle, a former member of the Florida Symphony Orchestra (this orchestra dissolved in 1993) who also worked in Florida as a trombonist, electric bassist, and double bassist, including a lot of [...]

It’s a great feeling to have completed and put out Road Warrior Without an Expense Account, my first book, earlier this year. It’s a considerable amount of work to publish a book; though I think I always knew this, going through the process personally really drives it home! If you are interested in where employment [...]

Here’s a fun little story that one of my more senior colleagues recently passed along to me:
Many years ago, the conductor Hans Werner Henze was rehearsing Stauss’ tone poem “Till Eugenspiegel” with the Chicago Symphony. There is a particularly snarly passage for the bassoons and violas in this piece–it’s the sort of thing that regularly [...]

As I’ve blogged several times in the past month, my summer so far has been spent playing chamber music in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin. This has been a blast, but after several weeks up north I’ve been itching to get back to Chicago, and I ducked mid-concert on July 3rd (I only played the first [...]

Adaptistration blogger and Inside the Arts mastermind Drew McManus recently put out a post about summer music festivals that really caught my eye. In this post (dated 6/27/08), Drew writes:
Unlike regular season positions, music festivals have an added bonus by offering their exclusive location as an added incentive to performance and travel pay. Add to [...]

It’s been a great year of blogging for me personally, and I’m really excited to have reached the phase of development for both Contrabass Conversations and doublebassblog.org that I’m at currently. We’ve got a large daily readership (we were pushing 2000 daily page views for these sites plus Arts Addict during the spring) and a [...]

I think that all men in classical music look at the concert attire worn by our female colleagues with a little bit of envy from time to time. Not that we men all want to wear heels and make-up (though some of us probably do….not that there’s anything wrong with that!), but putting on a [...]