Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

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A reader recently passed along the following link about the Freeway Philharmonic, a new movie based on the lives of San Francisco Bay Area musicians, and I am amazed that I haven’t seen this before. This movie completely ties into the various phenomena that I explored in my 2007 series Road Warrior [...]

When you think about it, isn’t it amazing that a group of musicians can ever play together in a symphonic setting? Honestly, having all those different instruments, from tuba to tympani, with all those methods of sound production, from blowing to plucking, situated across either a vast resonant expanse of stage or a [...]

 

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We’re wrapping up our interview with author, corporate speaker, and double bassist Justin Locke today. Justin is the author of Real Men Don’t Rehearse, a book filled with wonderful anecdotes about his life in the music business. Justin was a freelance double bassist in the Boston area for nearly two decades, working regularly [...]

A Week in the Life is a brief series chronicling a quirky but nevertheless quite typical week in the life of a mid-tier freelance musician.  Though the sort of wacky events I’ve described thus far undoubtedly happen in orchestras of all flavors, from the Berlin Philharmonic to the community orchestra down the block from me, [...]

 

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We’re wrapping up the interview with Pittsburgh Symphony Principal Bassist Jeff Turner that we began on episode 26 of the podcast, plus featuring music from U.K.-based bassist Leon Bosch’s new album titled The British Double Bass on this week’s episode of the podcast.
We also feature bass news, listener feedback, shout-outs to members of the [...]

I can’t program concerts to save my life.  At least, I’m sure my students feel that way!
One thing I’ve tried to do as a bass teacher, with varying degrees of success, is to have an annual recital for my students.  This is something that is really important to do as a private teacher–it gives students [...]

Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this story to get caught up with this wacky but typical week in the life of a freelance musician.
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Now on our third rehearsal, the orchestra for this small but feisty opera company congregated at the concert venue (a nice modern facility) for our first time performing with [...]

Read Part 1 of this story here.
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All things being equal, it is almost always a better deal to accept in-town work rather than out-of-town work as a freelancer.  The pay is usually better, the hours are usually shorter, and the artistic quality is usually higher.
The one big bummer with working "in-town", at least in Chicago, [...]

Taking stock at the end of a calendar year is a natural for most people, and I am certainly no exception.  Things are moving pretty quickly for me in these early years of the 21st century, and I feel like this is doubly true for my blogging and podcasting activities.

As I started to drive up to Milwaukee to begin my annual Nutcracker run, something suddenly struck me–I hadn’t left the state of Illinois since the summer! In fact, the furthest I’d wandered the whole fall was to take a few trips to Elgin, just 35 miles away from my lake front home.
The last [...]