Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

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Many bassists here in the States are busy preparing for the upcoming audition with the Pittsburgh Symphony. If you’re interested in this position, application details and a repertoire list are available at the bottom of this post (click the ‘read the rest of this entry’ link if you don’t see it).
We had the [...]

 

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Ira Gold, a member of the National Symphony bass section and a previous guest on the Contrabass Conversations podcast, is now on faculty at the Catholic University of America’s Benjamin T. Rome School of Music in Washington, D.C.
The school is accepting late applicants for Fall of ‘08. If interested, students can either view [...]

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 reliable. [...]

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 snow [...]

Classicalmusicnews.tv blogger and Contrabass Conversations co-host John Grillo continues his series ‘The Musical Universe’ with this second installment on his blog:
First came time! This is the second installment in my blog series “The Musical Universe.”  The first installment covered pitches emanating from black holes. This second installment will discuss the rhythm of our own Sun.  [...]

Here’s another video from Bad Boyz of Bass member and Contrabass Conversations guest Volkan Orhon. Volkan includes the following information about this video:
This is a live performance of Richard Strauss’ Morgen for soprano, doublebass and piano. It was performed at the Benefit Concert for the September 11th Terrorist Attack Victims. Sara Metcalfe, soprano [...]

 

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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 [...]

An arrangement of the Barber Adagio…for solo bass? Well, not exactly. This video features University of Iowa bass professor (and Contrabass Conversations guest) Volkan Orhon performing the solo part to the Barber Adagio along with recorded accompaniment.
Volkan writes:
This is a live performance of me playing the solo part along with the pre-recorded parts [...]