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Florence Foster Jenkins - So Bad It’s Good

Many musicians are familiar with the distinctive (to put it mildly) vocal stylings of Florence Foster Jenkins. Convinced of her greatness, she became a cult sensation for her unabashed badness. For those who aren’t familiar with her, here is an excerpt from her Wikipedia entry:

Born Florence Foster in 1868 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, [...]

New Blog Features and Internet Explorer fixes

I just added several new features to the Bass Page. At the top of the page are a whole bunch of tabs now which will guide you down into the catacombs of this blog. I will probably clean and tighten up these tabs over the next few weeks, but for now it [...]

Follow-Up to Rabbath versus Simandl

My double bass colleague John Tuck recently sent some comments regarding my Rabbath versus Simandl post. He agreed to let me share them here. John is Assistant Principal Bass for the Northwest Indiana Symphony. He also plays for the Lake Forest Symphony and the Des Moines Metro Opera Orchestra, and he has [...]

The Indindi Compendium from Wheel of Music

Greg Sarchet (Lyric Opera of Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Bass Club Chicago) pointed this list out to me recently. It is a list of all the different names and variants of the Inbindi. The Inbindi is either an acoustic or electric one string bass instrument, and there are dozens of styles from around the world. [...]

Symphony on the Swamp

If you like this story, check out my other gig nightmare stories here.
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During the summers of 2001 and 2002 I played double bass for the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. Originally this organization was part of the Festival of Two Worlds that Gian Carlo Menotti started in conjunction with Spoleto, Italy, and [...]

My Blogroll

I have been working on including as many relevant double bass, electric bass, music, and education blogs as I can on my blogroll in the sidebar on this blog. If anybody has any suggestions for more blogs to list, please leave a comment or e-mail me with ideas. Thanks!
Here are some of my recent additions:
Music

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More on Chamber Opera Chicago and Amahl

The dress rehearsal for Amahl and the Night Visitors was last night, and it should prove to be a charming run. You can read my previous post for more information or visit the Ruth Page Center for the Arts website for ticket information.
Victoria Bond, the conductor for this performance, has had a very interesting [...]

Advice for aspiring music performance majors

If you are interested in learning more about this subject, check out the follow-up post to this article here.
I have a B.M. and M.M. in Double Bass Performance from Northwestern University. Although I had a good financial package for my undergraduate degree and had a full-tuition fellowship or my graduate degree, I still owe [...]

Blog Redesign - now using Blogger Beta!

Yesterday I clicked the big blue button I had been staring at for the last few weeks in my Blogger Dashboard and switched to Blogger Beta. I am loving it so far. I have written two previous posts comparing Blogger Beta to other platforms. You can check them out here and here.
Google [...]

Hamburg Musikhalle

I love these two shots I took 10 years ago in Hamburg at their Musikhalle. Here is the audience entrance:
(That’s Burak in the blue sweater. Read my Burak dancing story here).
Here is the stage door for this hall (right next to the audience entrance):

I know that a hall needs a stage door, [...]

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