The Chicago Bass Festival is an event for the Chicago-area double bass community. “Come learn, share, and explore the vibrant Chicago double bass scene and work with some of the United States’ most talented and acclaimed double bass clinicians.”
The Chicago Bass Festival takes place at the Bennett Gordon Hall at Ravinia in Highland Park, Illinois, 30 minutes north of Chicago.
Mathias has sent me a review of the new Arco “Hugo” double bass amp, which is made by bassist Jesper Lundgaard. It’s to long to fit the proper comment field, so I descided to post it here. Here we go:
The arco-amplification Hugo
Arco Amplification is a brand name owned by Jesper Lundgaard, who has been developing amplifiers since his early youth. Looking back on an amazing career as a touring musician, he decided to take it a bit easier, stay home more, and focus on building bass and guitar amplifiers. He used to work together with a company named CADaudio, but they split and now he’s a one man company. It’s likely his company name will change in the future, but for now, it’s arco amplification.
The “hugo” is an amp built according to suggestions of Hugo Rasmussen, another legendary danish bassist. This is the amp I had the pleasure to try for a couple of days.
The long-bearded legend seems to be a sucker for simplicity- the amplifier sports a very stripped down set of controls. From left to right, they are: Master Volume, a mute switch, treble and bass controls, a phase reverse switch, and a tone switch (where you can change between bright, normal, and dark). Continue reading
I recently discovered an interesting music website, Wolfgang’s Vault. “The World’s Greatest Collection of Vintage Concert Recordings” has just acquired recordings from the Newport Jazz and Folk Festival.
Wolfgang’s Vault now offers concert recordings by artists like Ahmad Jamal Trio, Dizzy Gillespie, The Four Freshman, Gene Krupa Quartet, George Shearing, Herbie Mann Sextet, Horace Silver Quintet, Jimmy Smith Trio, The Mastersounds, Oscar Peterson Trio, Maynard Ferguson, Stan Kenton Orchestra, Thelonious Monk and others as a MP3 download, or free music stream.
Today, Jesper Bodilsen from Danmark stopped by to try out the Eminence and the Chrisopher RN. He is currently on tour with guitarist Ulf Wakenius, and while talking about travelling with the bass and double bass transportation in general, he told me that at his hometown Copenhagen, almost every bass player owns a Christiania bike. These bikes have two front wheels and a luggage space for up to 100 kgs. You can easily put a full size double bass and a small amplifier into the compartment. As I like riding a bike more than driving a car, I lik the idea of the Christiania bike. But a drawback is that you probably can’t go staircases with the Christiania. I keep my bikes stored at the basement (10 steps or something like that), and my local train station has maybe 30 steps and no elevator. Seems to be an insurmountable obstacle …
Massimo Biolcati, double bassist from NYC and developper of the iRealBook iPhone-App has updated his iRealBook Editor software for Mac. Even if you don’t own a iPhone (or iPod touch), the iRealBookEditor is a really useful piece of software. You can put together leadsheets very fast, transpose the changes, and print them out or send as PDF. Besides this, Massimo has also launched a Forum – you can now send your tunes to the iRealBook Forum, and discuss and share your transcribed changes with other musicians. You can also find and download a couple of alternate versions and new tunes there, that don’t come with the iPhone app (yet). Massimo has solved this integration very simple, but elegant.
“A convention for all who love the double bass” – after the great success of Bass 2008 in Paris, the next big double bass event is announced to take place at Berlin in October 2010. Participants and guests can expect numerous musical double bass highlights and many different possibilities to interact with other experts in the field: Internationally reknowned professors, double bass soloists, publishers, instrument, string and bow makers will present themselves. Moreover, there will be competitions and workshops for all age groups. And, of course, you will be able to exchange and mingle with other double bass fans from Europe and all over the world. More informations at the Bass2010 website.
Playing the bass by sliding the video’s timeline … a YouTubeBass is something that we don’t necessarily need, or what we have inpatiently been waiting for – but it’s a funny idea, anyhow.
But don’t miss to watch Adam Ben Ezra’s double bass version of the Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean!
On Sunday night, bassist Ben Williams won the prestigous Thelonius Mink Competion in his hometown Washington. The six judges, including Ron Carter, Charlie Haden and Dave Holland, winnowed the list to three (Joe Sanders from Milwaukee, Matt Brewer of Albuquerque and Ben Williams) and those finalists performed Sunday with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and a rhythm section of pianist Geoff Keezer and drummer Carl Allen.
“The crowd favorite was 24-year-old Ben Williams, who grew up in Northeast D.C. and graduated from Davey Yarborough’s jazz program at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. He pulled hard at the strings, building up a powerful rhythmic attack on Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” locking eyes and trading musical ideas with the ebullient Bridgewater.” reports Matt Schudel/Washington Post.
More about Ben Williams at his MySpace page.
Basskat
Type: combo amp
Power rating: 125 Watts/RMS (8 Ohms)
Drivers: 10” Celestion Speaker
Features: 2 Channels; 12AX7 Tube on Channel 1 – Switchable on/off with an ON LED, Channel 1 – Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, 1/4” Phone Plug
Channel 2 – Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, Combo Plug (1/4” Phone or XLR), 20lbs
16 Digital Effects with separate Level Control, Extension Speaker Jack (8 – 16 Ohms), Headphone Jack, Line Out – XLR and ¼” Phone, Line Send / Return, Switchable power supply 120/240V, H 15” X W 12” X D 11”. Input impedance: 1 Mohm (2 MOhm avaliable upon request).
My posts at www.DoubleBassGuide.com and www.Kontrabassblog.de (my German double bass weblog) can now be followed at twitter: www.twitter.com/jonaslohse.
While I was setting up this, I also fixed a configuration mistake at my FeedBurner account, where you can subscribe my posts via email. So this service should properly work again now, too.