Chicago Bass Ensemble

As usual, it’s been a while since writing a post for this blog. Here’s a very quick entry about what’s going on and what’s next.

We had our performance at North Shore Baptist Church on the 13th of October. While the turn out was a little light, it went well. The organizer, accompanist and piano tuner Randall Fleer, seemed pleased; and we agreed that part of the reason was probably the fact that it was a holiday weekend. A group from the Breakers retirement community was in attendance, and I was tickled when one of them told me “I never would have come to this if it was violins!”

One of the things low on my to-do list–not because it’s unimportant, but because so much else is on the list–is to get programs from the October 13 performance out to composers and publishers of the pieces we performed. *mock sigh* One of the hazards of playing music by living composers! Thank you to all of you for writing music for double basses!

As I began to play François Rabbath’s Pucha Dass, I had a moment of internal panic, wondering if the seniors in the crowd would be disgusted and horrified by this moody and dramatic modern piece. But it went well and received solid applause. On reflection I realized that the people we call ‘seniors’ today were in early adulthood or early middle age when the piece was written and when composers like Stockhausen, Feldman and Subotnick were achieving prominence. This isn’t foreign music to these people. If they were music lovers at that time in their lives, they might have attended performance of works that are considerably more avant-garde than this one. Understand your audience!

Next, we’re on tap for the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater bass festival (last year’s page is still up as I write). A different set of players this time: Julian Romane–who played so brilliantly on Armand Russell’s Ultra Rondo, Josh Harrison–a participant in many of our reading sessions, and John Tuck–one of the first “Four Js” who performed at UW-W many years ago. I’m waiting for bios and vehicle information from some of these guys, keep an eye out for updates.

And we’re hoping to pull together Frank Proto’s bass quartet for the next Chicago Bass Festival on Feb 2, 2014. This is part of an excellent plan that is receiving mediocre execution. I confess, it’s my inaction that needs to change!

As I write this, I’m very pleased to see that instead of just leaving last year’s web page in place, the MYA has created a placeholder page for the next festival that has current information. Thank you, MYA! It will be much easier to tell students and colleagues about the festival with that page in place.

Those of you with the ability to read the English language have no doubt grimaced more than once about the switching of voice (from first person singular to first person plural) throughout this, and all, my blog posts. We’d love to read your criticism of my linguistic style in the comments!

Cheers!
Jacque Harper