From April, 17. to 19., the Double Bass Festival Bass Encounters 2008 will take place at the Porgy & Bass Bess club at Vienna/Austria, featuring concerts with both classical and jazz double bassists: Wayne Darling, Georg Breinschmid, Bass Instinct, Franco Petracchi, Eddie Gomez, Duncan McTier, Renau Garcia-Fons, Avishai Cohen, Janne Scala and Joel Quarrington.
Today, I’ve found the new issue of the Double Bassist magazine in my post box. This “winter 2007” issue (don’t we already have 2008?) features articles about bassist Henry Grimes, a Gagliano bass, music by Gustav Mahler and Paquito de Rivera, video conferencing in teaching, a history of gut strings, the future of pernambuco bows, luthier Daniel Hachez and many other topics.
But there are also bad news: editor Chloe Cutts has announced that the Double Bassist magazine will no longer be published. It will be re-incorperated into The Strad magazine from the April 2008 issue onwards. Double Bassist was launched 11 years ago, and since then, 43 issues has been published.
I’ve just added a list of interesting, mostly double bass related podcasts to my Link page. Check them out, they’re for free!
Spiegel Online, the leading German news magazine, has published an English version of an article about the market of antique violins. As even double bassists know, Stradivarius’ instruments might be a lucrative investment: Since 1960, the Dow Jones Index and the price of gold have risen by a factor of 20. According to Fushi’s Stradivari Society, the price of a Stradivarius has soared by a factor of 200, and it rises, says Fushi, by 7 to 10 percent annually. This article gives some intersting insights into this market.
Pianist Oscar Peterson has died yesterday at the age of 82. Thank you, Oscar, for your wonderful music!
Last week, bassist Tyrone Bishop from Birmingham/UK stayed in Frankfurt while being on tour with the “Rat Pack”-Frank Sinatra-show. Tyrone is not only a bassplayer, but also the editor of the website www.jazzdoublebass.com, featuring articles, videos and a forum.
After the show at the “Alte Oper”, he and some of his bandmates came to the Jazzkeller, which is just around the corner (and the oldest jazzclub in Europe still in existence). We have a Jazz Jam Session there every Wednesday, so they joined us to play where Frank Sinatra already has been drinking some German beer after his shows, too …
The Original
Designed to fit into the bass’s bridge wing
Double Barrel
Essentially, the Double Barrel is an Original Model with an added half tranducer element. This gives an emphasis on higher frequencies.
Rockabilly Recoil
Designed for the Rockabilly Player, works without batteries. This system includes the pickup (bridge transducer element and fingerboard transducer element), and the passive preamp.
Klaus Trumpf has given over the administration of the famous International Weeks for Double Bass at Kloster Michaelstein (Germany) to Silvio Dalla Torre. In 2008, the now called “Kontrabass-Kaleidoskop” event will take place March, 10.–15.
Japanese car company Toyota has presented a roboter that knows playing the violin (video clip at Spiegel Online, a german news magazin). Don’t know if they are working on a double bass version.
The December/January issue of Bass Musician Magazine rolled off the virtual press with cover interview Nathan East. This issue also includes Rhonda Smith, Bunny Brunel, Gerald Veasley, Cheikh Ndoye and more.