Owner: Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog URL:http://jasonheath.blogspot.com Join Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:33:20 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Classical music and double bass news, funny stories, videos, MP3s, practicing tools, educational resources, and much more. Site statistics:Click here
IRIS Orchestra now an independent entity 2007-04-22 01:12:00 The Commercial Appeal put out a feature today on the IRIS Orchestra
and its new status as an official nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. You can read the article for more information on how this new organizational structure will impact future endeavors.Some of the facts quoted in the article are not entirely accurate, so take some of the statistics with a grain of salt. This is really exciting and positive news for the IRIS Orchestra, and it should help the group to continue to grow and innovate in new and interesting ways.Click to read Breaking Free: The IRIS Orchestra from the Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) Read more:independent
Funny gig story from Doug Johnson 2007-04-20 15:47:00 Double bassist Doug Johnson
has a great gig story
that I'd like to share with blog readers. Doug is an active double bassist in the Chicago area, and he performs with ensembles raging from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to the excellent bass and percussion band Gunnelpumpers.Here's Doug's story. Enjoy!_______________So I have freelanced as a bass player in and around Chicago for years, so it's only natural that strange things happen from time to time. In my book, this wedding takes the cake.A pianist, violinist and myself were hired to play at a Jewish wedding at a small synagogue on Chicago 's north side. The couple to be wed were fond of the Beatles, Billy Joel and others, so our plan was for our trio to play some simple arrangements of these songs. We had rehearsed the previous day, decided the song order, and that Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" would be the processional at the beginning of the ceremony.On the way to the synagogue for the wedding, it so happened that Ch Read more:Funny
Student Performance of Bottesini Concerto 2007-04-18 13:14:00 Here is a video of a 17-year-old student playing the first movement of the Bottesini Concerto
for a competition. I like how the camera is carefully hidden from the audience--it makes the space he is playing in look quite bizarre. He admits (in the comments for this video) that there are a fair number of missed notes during this performance, but I think that his tone is quite nice. Read more:Performance
, Student
New Scale Sheets - no fingerings 2007-04-16 13:21:00 I have a page with a (slowly) growing collection of odds and ends for download. You can visit this downloads page here. In addition to technique routines from various bass players and some transcriptions of pieces, here are currently scale fingerings that I created for all major and (natural, harmonic, and melodic) minor scales. I created them, uploaded them, and then promptly deleted them from my computer. A few days later, I realized that there were a bunch of misprints in these scales, making reediting the parts extremely difficult. Aargh!Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Northern Illinois University bass instructor John Floeter also sent me some fingering charts for the same selection of scales, and these can be downloaded from that same page. He also found some errors on his own fingering charts, so you may have to do a little minor editing on either of these sets of fingerings.A colleague of mine asked recently if I could make a available the same set of slace sheets withou Read more:Scale
, Sheets
Concerto de Aranjuez - Paco de Lucia 2007-01-15 07:48:00 As a follow up to my recent IRIS Chamber Orchestra post about our concert with Jason Vieaux playing the Conterto de Aranjez by Joaqin Rodrigo, I thought it would be approtriate to post this video of Paco de Lucia
playing this work. the video is about 23 minutes, so fast forward for a bit for the famous second movement. Read more:Aranjuez
, Concerto
IRIS Chamber Orchestra - Finding Rothko 2007-01-14 06:21:00 We just completed the January IRIS concert tonight here in Memphis, Tennessee, and it really got a great reception. Jason Vieaux played fabulously, and the commission by Adam Schoenberg went really well.Finding Rothko (Adam's commission) was a really rich and satisfying piece. It was based on the paintings of Mark Rothko. Here is a sampling of Rothko's work--the piece was based on four of his paintings, and these paintings were projected above the stage during the concert. The images are pulled from the NGA.gov website: Read more:Chamber
, Orchestra
IRIS Chamber Orchestra and Time for Three 2006-12-15 07:52:00 The IRIS ChamberOrchestra
of Germantown, Tennessee will be performing this Saturday (12/16/06) with the extremely cool trio Time for Three
. Time for Three is made up of Nicolas Kendall and Zachary DePue on violin and Ranaan Meyer on bass. The trio are active MySpacers--you can find their MySpace page at myspace.com/timeforthree. They have around 600 friends on MySpace, which basically means that they are considered very cool among the younger generation.The program consists of:Dvorak: Symphonic Variations, Op. 78John Hedges, arr.: American SuiteJohn Hedges, arr.: FoxdownSchumann: Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 12I have played the Schumann and the Dvorak numerous times before, and it is a breath of fresh air to play the these pieces with a great ensemble like IRIS. I had a week three years ago where I played the Dvorak Symphonic Variations in three performances with two separate orchestras. One was the Lake Forest Symphony of Lake Forest, Illinois, and this was a very high quality
more IRIS Chamber Orchestra trivia - bass section 2006-10-29 06:23:00 All of the IRIS bass section substitutes have gone on to have great full-time orchestra jobs:Charles Carlton - Cleveland Orchestra
Matt Medlock - Naples PhilharmonicIra Gold - National SymphonyJeff Kail - Kansas City SymphonyMy stand partner Scott Best has been principal bass of the Memphis Symphony since the beginning of IRIS. The two of us have been the core bass section for the past seven seasons.By the way, this photo is the only bit of terrain in the drive from Chicago to Memphis. Anyone who has driven I 57 between these cities knows this hill. It occurs about 30 miles from the Illinois/Missouri border around Cairo. This is a view from the south. You can see how the land rises up to the Illinois plains plateau. If it is raining in the south it will often quit after ascending this hill, and if it is snowing in the north it will often switch to rain after descending this hill. Read more:Chamber
IRIS Chamber Orchestra on CD and iTunes 2006-10-29 01:08:00 I recently discovered that some IRIS ChamberOrchestra
recordings are available on iTunes
. Search the iTunes Store for the Gliere Horn Concerto and you will find a recording that we did a few years ago with Eric Ruske.There are four great audio clips of IRIS that you can listen to on the IRIS website. Click the numbers in the lower left of the page. To view the current IRIS season, visit this website.Additionally, recordings can be purchased from Amazon and Naxos at the following links:IRIS on NaxosIRIS on AmazonIRIS on iTunes (will open iTunes on your computer) technorati tags: IRIS, Chamber, Orchestra, iTunes, CD
New World Symphony live webcast this Sunday - 4:30 p.m. EDT 2007-04-28 13:47:00 The World
.htm">New World
Symphony
will be performing Stravinsky's Pétrouchka with Michael Tilson Thomas this Sunday
at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Here is some more information on this event from the NWS website: On Sunday, April 29 at 4:30PM EDT, the New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy, will webcast a performance Igor Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka live from the Lincoln Theatre on Miami Beach. Introduced and conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, this free, audio-visual webcast is part of the New World Symphony’s ongoing efforts to make its presentations accessible to a wide array of listeners. Originally written for the Ballets Russes in 1911 and revised in 1947, Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka is a masterpiece of the orchestral repertoire. Sandwiched between the resounding popularity of The Firebird and the controversial premiere of The Rite of Spring, Pétrouchka depicts the story of a straw puppet that comes t
new footage of Nora the piano-playing cat 2007-04-27 14:30:00 Violinist Holly Mulcahy recently sent me a link to this new, even cuter video featuring Nora the cat playing the piano
. You can click here for the original video. The startling thing about these videos is how obviously Nora enjoys playing the piano. She is definitely communicating with humans through the instrument.Also, she really likes major 2nds, and she really likes white keys. No pentatonic scales for Nora, I guess.If you've just gotta have more cat footage, you can always click my 'cats' tab at the top of the blog to view all cat-related posts (or just click here).
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