Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

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The February 2008 edition of International Musician, the monthly publication from the American Federation of Musicians, contains a feature on this site and the various satellite projects that I have developed during these past few years of blogging and podcasting, including Arts Addict, Inside the Arts, and Contrabass Conversations.
This feature contains several references [...]

Abu Bratsche: New Year, new boss
Robert Levine on MSO’s Edo de Waart appointment: “Most members of the orchestra regard this as very good news, I think. He’s arguably the best-known conductor we’ve ever had as music director (certainly the one with the most illustrious career prior t
(tags: edo de waart milwaukee symphony robert levine [...]

non divisi: MD Hide and Seek Part 1
From Frank Almond: “Ten days ago Edo de Waart was named the next Music Director of the Milwaukee Symphony. The appointment attracted quite a bit of press, and seemed to take a lot of people by surprise (in a positive way).”
(tags: frank almond insidethearts milwaukee symphony seattle edo [...]

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.

The December crush of activity has finally ebbed–only one more New Year’s gig to do this week, and I’m done with performances for a week or two.

After a solid six weeks of wall-to-wall gigs, I’m ready for a break. I’ve really dialed back the driving this year (becoming slightly less of a road warrior [...]

Snow day in Chicago
Brian Dickie took a very pretty photo of Chicago right after this past snowstorm. Much nicer-looking than the roads on my harrowing Milwaukee trip home.
(tags: brian dickie snow chicago milwaukee)

Honolulu symphony can’t pay musicians - The Honolulu Advertiser
A Honolulu Symphony concert went off as scheduled last night at the Blaisdell Concert [...]

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 [...]

We’ve gotten slammed here in Chicago with the first really big snowfall of the season.  This kind of thing used to strike terror into my very core as I envisioned the slipping and sliding that I would be doing on rural Wisconsin back roads, commuting hundreds of miles between disparate locations in the frozen and [...]

 

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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 with [...]

This topic was actually the very first personal narrative ever attempted here on the blog, a little less than a year ago. While I still enjoy this previous post (with pictures of the described drive), the topic of all-night commuting is such a painfully bizarre one that I thought it could stand to [...]