John Grillo and The Princeton Festival

Contrabass Conversations guest and bass blog contributor John Grillo is playing principal bass for The Princeton Festival, a summer music festival that opens this Saturday(6/23/07) with a performance of Bizet’s Carmen. John has mentioned that the singers and...

Weekly Bass Blog Wrap-Up

Doing a weekly wrap-up is something that I have been thinking about for a while. I got the idea from Lorelle VanFossen’s blog Lorelle on WordPress, an excellent blog about blogging (of great interest to me–probably not so much for most bass blog readers)....

DaXun Zhang leaves Northwestern University for UT-Austin

Northwestern University double bass faculty member DaXun Zhang has accepted a position with the University of Texas-Austin beginning Fall 2007 and will be leaving his Northwestern teaching post. This is sad news for the double bass community in Chicago, but great news...

Flea starts music conservatory in Los Angeles

I found this Washington Post story through a recent post on Alex Ross’ blog The Rest is Noise. According to the Post, federal and state cutbacks prompted Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea’s organization of the Silverlake Conservatory:Flea (born Michael...

Why I teach

I fell backwards into teaching, making it one of the core components of my professional life without even realizing it. If I had been more perceptive, in fact, I probably would have resisted, kicking and screaming every inch of the way.Why?Well, I come from a family...