In March, the Musikmesse Frankfurt will take place again. At this yearly international trade fair, musical instruments, music software and computer hardware, sheet music and accessories will be exhibited. Most intersting for double bassists: hall 1.2, featuring string instruments. (I’ll be at booth B40, just in case you want to say hello …)
“A very big convention for bass players from all over the world will be held for the first time in Paris at the CONSERVATOIRE NATIONAL SUPERIEUR de MUSIQUE et de DANSE de PARIS from the 30th of October to the 3rd of November 2008.
This meeting will include renowned artists representing all styles: classical, contemporary classical, avant-garde and jazz – publishers and producers, instrument makers and all you can imagine that exists for and about the bass and the double bass.
Players will do master-classes, show-cases, clinics and recital performances.
A competition of composition for double bass is organized, a player’s competition with four categories recital, orchestra, Jazz, contemporary music, and a mini-bass competition (7 to 18 years old) will be held.
Master classes and competitions will be held in the morning, performances will take place in the afternoon. Each evening a big concert-panorama will have place with players from different styles following each other on the same stage.
Our wish is to produce encounters and discoveries, to improve learning methodologies and teaching methods, to emphasize technical and expressive progress, to decompartmentalize and to create exchanges and new links.
Classicals :
Božo Paradžik, Dan Styffe, Niek de Groot, Giuseppe Ettorre, Alberto Bocini, Roman Patkolo, Boguslaw Furtok, Jeff Bradetish, Yoshio Nagashima, Teppo Hauta Aho, Ekkehard Beringer, Daniel Marillier, Thierry Barbé, Bernard Cazauran, Lasse Lagerkranz, Rinat Ibraghimov, trio Bass’in, Joel Quarrington, Gottfried Engels, Antonio Garcia Araque, Diana Gannett, Miloslav Gelinek, Hans Sturm, François Rabbath, Paul Ellison, Thom Knific, Marc Morton, Catalin Rotaru, George Vance, Luis Cojal…..
Jazz:
Rufus Reid, John Patiticci, Benoit Dunoyer, Bruno Chevillon, Claude Tchamitchian, Riccardo del Fra, Frederick Monino, Renaud Garcia Fons, Hein van de Geyn …
Contemporary music: Barre Philips, Stefano Scodanibbio, Jean-Paul Celea, Jean-Pierre Robert, Michel Thouseau…
Baroque: Tobias Gloecker, David Sinclair, Rob Nairn, Joe Carver, Michael Greenberg, Richard Myron …
The 2008 team: Thierry Barbe, Riccardo Del Fra, Didier Goury, Gregoire Blin, Jean Damien Lagarde, Claudine Petiot, Sylvain Lamotte.”
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.
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 …
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.
David Gage String Instruments (celebrates his 30th year in the business in 2007) has announced upcoming masterclasses. The 2007-2008 Workshop Series is about to begin with two great presentations: first, the father and son duo Barre & Dave Phillips will be at Gage’s Workshop in Manhatten on Tuesday, November 27th, and then Ron Carter will present a masterclass on left-hand technique on Monday, December 3rd. These presentations will be streamed live on the internet on www.mikesmasterclasses.com.
Since I’ve put together the first version of my double bass website more than 10 years ago, the Internet and the way websites get published has changed. So I decided to turn my rather static Double Bass Guide website into a dynamic site, or more specific a so called weblog, offering the visitors advanced features like comments, RSS feeds, trackbacks, tags etc.; and me a more comfortable way to keep everything up to date. After installing WordPress to the webserver, adjusting the templates and stylesheets, putting together the category structure and feeding the database with content, I’ve finally replaced the old static pages and launched this DoubleBassGuide weblog. Please use the comment feature and let me know wheter you like it!
– Jonas