Contrabass Conversations double bass life

Nina DeCesare's creative musical quest is inspiring. First, she won the 14 and under International Society of Bassists solo competition. Then she won it again for the 15-18 division. She studied at Rice University, Tanglewood, and Domaine Forget. Also, she won a scholarship to study with François Rabbath in Paris. Nina ended her time at Rice by winning a position with the Oregon Symphony.

Hans Sturm isn’t afraid to reinvent himself. Everything changed for Hans when he first met François Rabbath. Before he knew it, he was in Paris soaking up these new concepts. Fast forward many years, and we find Hans playing the second Rabbath Concerto with Sylvan Rabbath on piano. If you look at the music for this concerto, you’ll see that François dedicated this piece to Hans.

Diana Gannett might be the most thoughtful double bass teacher I’ve ever encountered. Her approach to teaching is comprehensive and nuanced. She incorporates everything from group warm-ups to Aikido principles on her website. Every bassist out there should have this site bookmarked!

Hugh Sung is the ultimate musical entrepreneur. After years spent teaching at the Curtis Institute of Music, Hugh co-founded AirTurn, a company that produces pedals designed to turn pages on a tablet device. Hugh is also an author.  In fact, he wrote From Paper to Pixels as a result of using tablet devices for reading music.

Teaching improvisation is like Fight Club. The first rule of teaching improvisation is you don’t talk about improvisation! That’s Project Trio’s approach, and it’s totally compelling. 10 years ago, Peter took all the energy and drive he had for the audition circuit and poured into getting Project Trio off the ground. We talked about it back then.

Danny Ziemann couldn’t find a book on bass lines that worked for him. So he created The Low Down. Now he’s released his second volume, and he’s looking to expand way beyond that. Danny is committed to teaching the fundamentals in a clear, step-by-step process. It’s a fresh approach to jazz bass pedagogy from the mind of a committed music educator.

Lauren Pierce started out on the typical music school path. But something happened along the way. In the midst of grad school, Lauren decided to quit. She struck out on her own and asked herself a critical question: What if?

This is Emilio Guarino. He plays bass. But that’s not all he does. He makes music with computers. He also teaches and performs in many musical styles. He’s even written a book to help musicians figure out how to find a foothold.

Christine Hoock is a tossed salad of musical genres. Maybe she’s playing Phillip Glass.  Perhaps she’s performing Arvo Pärt.  She could even be playing tangos or jamming with a DJ.   But regardless of what she’s playing, it’s with her beautiful, compelling sound. Günter Klaus and Franco Petracchi taught her, and she has taken the double bass a new level.

Pablo Aslan breaks bow hairs. A lot of bow hairs. In fact, he rivals the guys in the Met for most-frequent rehair at his NYC bow shop. He also makes killer bass lines.  He’s truly the Ray Brown of bowed marcato bass lines. Learn how he does it in this interview!

Sam Suggs calls himself an omnivorous musician. I love this tagline. I feel like I’m eating at a fantastic fusion restaurant when I hear Sam’s music.  I'm not expecting these flavors to work, but they are so good together. First, he takes a little 1750s galant style. Next, he adds a dash of Verdi. He finally tops it off with—I kid you not—Skrillex and Daft Punk. Then he marches over to a bar and gives it a battle test in front of the patrons.

On both the blog and the podcast, I’ve always taken the stance of making things as good as I can and then putting them out in the world without any apologies.  Nothing drives me crazy more than listening to a podcast and heading the host apologize for a few minutes about this or that.

Thierry Barbé is a man in constant motion.  When he’s not performing as principal bass of the Paris National Opera or teaching at the Paris Conservatory, Thierry can be found in all corners of the globe, performing lesser-known gems from the bass repertoire and giving clinics along the way.

It's time for our 2016 listener survey! This survey will only take a minute or so to fill out, and it's incredibly helpful for me.

I wrote a three-part series for Drew McManus’ site ArtsHacker earlier this year, and this got my brain going: what if I also put out some “pulling back the curtain” podcasts about how I do all of this and what I’ve learned in the process?  So that’s what today’s episode is.  I’m breaking this into two parts: today I'm covering “the art of the interview” and seven lessons I’ve learned about interviewing.  Next time we’ll go deep into the tech behind recording, editing, and putting th