Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of freelance.

It’s early December and I am knee deep in Messiah season, pumping them out on a daily basis for ensembles all across Chicagoland. 
Messiah Messiah Messiah Messiah Messiah….I eat, drink, and breathe this piece morning, noon, and night this time of year.  Just what I think I’ve escaped, it pulls me back in with [...]

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week, we bring listeners a very entertaining and interesting interview with Justin Locke, 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 during that time [...]

My recent interview with the always entertaining and anecdote-filled Justin Locke prompted me to poke around his site in search of more amusing tales.  There, I found this post about ways in which musicians woefully misrepresent themselves to orchestra contractors.  As a performer-turned-contractor, Justin now finds himself on the other end of the hiring spectrum, [...]

One can’t help but have their interest piqued by the title of Justin Locke’s expose about the inner workings of the music business.  Real Men Don’t Rehearse is the exact sort of book I love to read–witty, lighthearted, yet insightful and full of valuable lessons that those outside the music industry are likely to [...]

I had the opportunity to appear as a guest lecturer for the orchestral studies seminar class at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of the Performing Arts earlier this week, which was a lot of fun for me and hopefully a good experience for the students as well.  I inhabited the role of grizzled freelance music veteran, [...]

The following is a guest post from Double Bass Blog contributor Phillip W. Serna. Check out Phillip’s recitals and interviews on his Contrabass Conversations page, and visit him online at http://www.phillipwserna.com/. Enjoy!
__________________
Contrabass Conversations and the Double Bass Blog are continues is series on early bass performers. It will highlight many different perspectives on early bass/ [...]

One of the biggest challenges for a blogger is making useful older content easy to access without becoming an annoying self-promotion machine.  I am always struggling with this, and I’ll probably do highlight posts like this every once in a while.  These are a few of my favorite blog stories and resources from the last [...]

I love these sort of posts from Michael Hovnanian.  Funny, quirky, and irreverent, Michael really does an excellent job of blogging about life as a bassist in a major symphony orchestra.  You can here Michael’s three-part Contrabass Conversations interview on his CBC page here.
Now, about those curious Chicago Symphony ‘bass boxes’.  Michael writes:
Sometimes I [...]

Ever since wrapping up Road Warrior Without an Expense Account, my ten-part series on life as a classical freelance musician, I have been getting e-mails encouraging me to publish this work in book form.  Although I have been kicking this idea around in the back of my mind for some time now, my busy pace [...]

A few days after putting out part 5 of This Crazy Business, I realized that a few of my comments and assumptions expressed in this post could use some clarification.  I’d like to take a moment and try to articulate a few topics that I glossed over or mischaracterized in this (and other similar) posts.
First, [...]