Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

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This week’s episode concludes the interview with jazz bass legend Steve Rodby that we featured on episodes 58 and 78 of the podcast. Rodby has played bass on every Pat Metheny Group record since 1980, co-produced the group’s last five albums and won 10 Grammy Awards with the group. He has toured with jazz [...]

Though this post’s title could easily be tied to a post about slow practice or something like that (which would make a good future blog post!), I’m actually referring here to the deliciously laid-back summer schedules that I’ve managed to get away with for much of my freelance career. While I have certainly had [...]

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 [...]

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When I was getting started as a freelance musician at the tail end of my masters degree, I was quaking in my boots about my future prospects. After all, I was regularly buying CDs at Borders and Barnes and Noble from former Northwestern doctoral music students. [...]

 

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We’re featuring something a bit unusual for this week’s Contrabass Conversations episode. Ball State University bass professor and International Society of Bassists president Hans Sturm has been featured several times on the podcast in video episodes, and this week we’re featuring Hans discussing the fundamentals of the Rabbath technique left hand positioning system.
This dialogue was [...]

While it may seem like a strange activity (and, looking around, I certainly seem to be the only guy with a laptop out here!), there is a certain kind of strange satisfaction that I get writing out on the beach, surrounded by nothing but Lake Michigan’s sandy shores and the spruce and pine forests of [...]

Over time, professional freelancers develop a set of skills quite peculiar to the profession, alternately taking on the role of long-haul trucker, delivery man, cabbie, and crisis control expert. Though they share the same basic musical skills as their more stably employed colleagues, freelancers are constantly faced with foreign environments and unfamiliar faces, and are [...]

Author note: One of my favorite things about summer is getting the chance to finally spend some time outside, and writing on my MacBook sitting under a tree with the birds chirping and the sun shining in the sky (which I’m doing right now) has to be one of life’s great pleasures.
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This is a guest post from double bassist and early music specialist Jerry Fuller. Learn more about Jerry and his early music podcast at ArsAntiguaPresents.com.
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I had a fascinating day. I performed Biber’s Mensa Sonora composed in 1680 with Chicago’s period instrument orchestra, The Baroque Band, and we recorded this music written 328 years ago with [...]

Today is the two-year anniversary of my recital on the Karr-Koussevitzy bass. I had a real whirlwind of a week when doing that recital, putting on a student recital the previous day and getting packed up to head off to a chamber music festival in Door County, Wisconsin the following day.

It’s amazing to think about [...]