Double bassist and classicalmusicnews.tv blogger John Grillo and I just wrapped up an opera excerpt breakdown for the Contrabass Conversations show. This is an extension of the orchestra excerpt breakdown that we began on episode 41 of the program. On this episode, we...
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...
Lyric Opera of Chicago bassist (and Contrabass Conversations guest) Greg Sarchet sent me a link to what is pretty much the greatest bass video of all time. I’m not sure whether to put an ‘explicit’ warning on this one–let’s just say that...
While surfing around online doing some promotional activities for the Contrabass Conversations podcast, I happened to stumble upon the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s MySpace page. Although finding an arts organization on MySpace is not exactly a rare occurrence, I was...
This photo features the Lyric Opera of Chicago bass section onstage beneath the imposing countdown clock from John Adams’ opera Doctor Atomic. (pictured left to right: Greg Sarchet, Aventino Calvetti, Mike Geller, Andy Anderson, Brian Ferguson, and Collins...
