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Greetings!
 Some players just amaze me. I should say all players amaze me as the ability to think musically through your fingers into the instrument is something I was musically never able to accomplish. Thankfully I am a better maker than a player and my personal needs are fulfilled though! But players like Tony Falanga just amaze me, and here's why. Last week I asked Tony what bass he was playing in the YouTube clip I posted. I asked because Tony owns one of my basses, and the bass in the video was not it. His reply was that it was a loaner bass. Airline travel with a bass has become so daunting that most players who do serious touring, especially overseas, have instruments they see for the first time at the gig. Tony can play the Bach suite on just about anything! No excuses, no fuss, just business as usual. I applaud that. So many players "can't" play other basses because the string length or neck heel or (etc) is different from their bass. Being able to play every bass in a room no matter the size, and play the Bach suites at that, is amazing to me. Bravo Tony! So...without further ado, I bring you some Friday night double bass entertainment! And remember...if you have ANY links, news, videos, etc. you want to share, eMail it to me at eroy@uptonbass.com and I'll be sure to share it. Oh...and if you just want to say "Hi" you can do that too! Have a nice weekend! Eric Roy
Upton Bass String Instrument Co
860-535-9399 |
John Martyn with Danny Thompson
Solid Air
YouTubeHi Eric,
Here's another YouTube clip for The Upton Report.
The
late, great John Martyn supported by the equally great, but thankfully
not yet late, British double bassist (and my earliest DB influence)
Danny Thompson.
Thoroughly enjoying The Upton Report each Friday,
Andy
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That One Guy
YouTubeAlso known as Michael Silverman, That 1 Guy is a Berkeley, Calif.-based,
classically trained string bassist. After performing with some of the
nation's top progressive jazz ensembles throughout the 1990s, Silverman
created an instrument out of wire and iron pipes that could serve his
ever-expanding musical techniques. Think "gutbucket" bass with a lot
more firepower. The result is an astonishing solo act. |
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Our annual concert (the 14th one!) called Basses Loaded was a big success. Thought you'd enjoy some of the wording.
All the bassed,
Gary (Karr)
Here's the review:
Basses Loaded XIV
Participants of KarrKamp 2010
Phillip T Young Recital Hall
July 27, 2010
By Deryk Barker
Until roughly four decades ago - when it was unceremoniously toppled
from its throne - John Philip Sousa's most famous single piece was
almost certainly The Stars and Stripes for Ever. (The toppling came about when the rather less well known Liberty Bell march was chosen for Monty Python's Flying Circus, thus ensuring its instant recognisability even in places where they have never heard of Sousa).
Even today, especially within beer-can-hurling-distance of an English football (soccer, if you must) stadium, the Stars and Stripes can
still be heard, albeit it truncated form and accompanied by the
deathless lyrics "Here we go, here we go, here we go" (this is the total
libretto, repeated numerous times), so that many in the UK habitually
refer to it as "The earwig song" (trying singing it aloud while dropping
the initial aspirate).
And it was with a splendidly vital, not to mention jolly, account of the Earwig Song that the official programme of Basses Loaded XIV closed on Tuesday evening.
One of the (many) delights of Basses Loaded is the way in
which the same formula can be the source of endless variation; one can
fairly easily summarise that formula: start with a Bach chorale prelude,
proceed with the ensemble playing a number of arranged works, have some
music played by smaller sub-ensembles, then a brief Karr-Lewis duo
recital and end with frequently well-known and
less-than-completely-serious pieces from the full ensemble again.
Oh yes, I must not forget the mandatory and greatly anticipated
appearance of the two Karr-Lewis canine accomplices during the final
piece.
But no matter how formulaic the programme may appear each year, somehow ennui never sets in.
This year, for example, the first half of the evening featured music
from five composers, all of whom were born in the same decade (1681 to
1690); one, Giacobo Cervetto, even lived to the ripe old age of 101 -
remarkable to think that he was born three years before Bach and Handel
and died a mere eight years before Mozart.
Bach and Telemann were the "big" names of this group, Cervetto,
Veracini and Durante (I'd love to discover that he was an ancestor of
Jimmy) the lesser-known.
The opening Bach chorale prelude is perhaps the Basses Loaded
signature piece (not that we hear the same one every year) and the joys
of apparently sitting inside a single huge instrument have been
well-enough adumbrated by myself and others in the past. This year's
performance of "Erbarm' dich mein, O Herre Gott" was up to the usual
high standard.
Cervetto's Sonata IV, played by the full ensemble, had a lumbering elegance all its own; Durante's Vergin Tutto Amor was beautifully plaintive.
Gary Karr and Hector Tirado gave a wonderful performance of an aria
by Telemann, made even more remarkable by the fact of Tirado's deafness.
Karr and (Victoria Symphony principal bassist) Mary Rannie gave a
delightful performance of Sonata VII by Veracini which culminated in a
deliciously lively 6/8 allegro finale.
More Veracini - the Sonata IV - closed the first half of the evening
performed by Karr and longtime partner Harmon Lewis. I thought the
opening largo e nobile particularly fine, even if (because?) it
bore a superficial resemblancee to "Ombra mai fu" - or Handel's
Largo as it was still known when I learnt to play it (very badly) on the
piano.
After all of this early-18th-century music, the opening of the second
half - a divertimento by Haydn - came as almost a shock. It was
marvellously played by Karr, Noriko Okamoto and Airi Shoda, with some
enchanting diminuendo and pianissimo playing in the minuet's trio.
It was a performance to remind one once again what a great, great
composer Haydn was, to be able to produce music of this quality in such
quantity (I suspect that this may well have originated as one of the 176
trios he wrote for the baryton).
Although there are age-limits for admission to KarrKamp - eighteen to
(for some bizarre reason) ninety-seven - as Karr admitted, he is
prepared to make the occasional exception.
Bazelaire's (who?) Aria di Chiesa was performed by three of
those "occasional" exceptions: Daniel Carias, Milad Daniari and Moe
Winograd, all of whom are just seventeen years old.
It was a sombre piece and played with much feeling, even if a
(presumed) lack of small-ensemble playing meant that there were
infrequent minor infelicities in synchronisation.
For many of the audience, I am sure, a - if not the - highlight of
the evening is the performance by the Karr-Lewis Duo; in this case they
gave two pieces by birthday boy Robert Schumann, the Romanze, Op.28 No,2 and Abendlied, Op.85 No.12.
These were the kind of performances which silence criticism: each of
the pair is a magnificent musician in his own right but their duo is
more than the sum of its parts. I look forward every year to these few
minutes more than I can say.
After which the entire ensemble trooped back onto the stage - for some more Schumann.
Northern Song certainly had the air of something from the Baltic and Wild Horsemen was bouncy and great fun.
At which point we shifted to North America with Down at the OK Corral by
T. Osborne - the only composer of the evening who is still with
us - a decidedly cheerful piece, given the association most of us have
with the name "O.K.Corral", full of nods in the direction of Copland and
even a hint of the theme from Bonanza.
Some real Copland followed - the Hoe-Down from Rodeo - and then Leonard Bernstein's paean to the joys of 6/8 time: America from West Side Story ("Everything's
free in America - for a small fee in America"), taken at a somewhat
deliberate tempo, but not lacking in propulsion.
And finally, the aforementioned Earwig Song, enlivened by
Karr's dazzling playing of the fluting (actually I think the original
uses the piccolo, but there is no such word as "piccoloing") descant
somewhere in the nosebleed section of his bass's fingerboard.
For some reason I always leave the hall on these occasions with a
mild feeling of regret that I ever gave up the bass; but it is
inevitably tempered with the knowledge that, even on my best days, I
never had one iota of the talent displayed by the people on stage on
Tuesday evening.
Basses Loaded is an institution; long may it flourish.
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Tony Falanga
YouTube This video was shot in our showroom. Tony had been here less than 5 minutes after a 3 hour car trip. Tony has never played this bass before the video...this is cold with no warm up. |
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