Posts Tagged ‘Stephen Tramontozzi’

The Chromatic Endpin—Making a Change Months Later

Monday, August 13th, 2018

Well, it has been almost a year that I have been using the Chromatic Endpin. Previous posts detailed my experiments with different rotation angles, and I had settled on an angle that shifted the weight of the bass away from my body slightly. I described this in my “day three” post.

Well about a month ago—as of the day that I’m writing this—I decided to make a pretty radical switch. I changed the rotation of the pin so that more of the weight of the bass would fall into my body.

I had always more or less subscribed to Gary Karr’s thinking of having the bass lean into the left hand. As I understood it, this means that the arm and hand don’t have to “press” the bass, in essence the bass is pressing them. I guess I can’t say that I was ever super-rigorous about feeling this ‘pressing,’ and to be honest I probably didn’t do my technique any favors by switching back and forth from seated to standing. I started out playing standing, switched to seated when studying with Brian Marcus (I think that was when I switched, anyway) and continued seated when at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music studying with Stephen Tramontozzi, but then went back to standing after that. (Boy oh boy isn’t making hyperlinks fun? I should mention I studied with Sal Macchia for a while too! Oh and Greg Sarchet!)

Okay, back to blogging and away from bragging.

So I made the switch and my end pin now looks like this:

The result, and this is what I said to my friend Rich Armandi at Chicago JazzPhilharmonic rehearsal, is that the bass suddenly felt like it was hugging me. It was a pretty dramatic feeling. I have now been playing like this for over a month, including rehearsals and concert with CJP and also with a local semi-pro symphony, and it’s going well.

I haven’t done the more rigorous self-examination I described in the ‘day one and two’ post—i.e. playing specific excerpts and scales to assess the effect of the end pin on my playing—but my casual observation is that there has been no problem. I’m just as sloppy and undisciplined as I was before, haha.

So what should you conclude from this? You should try the Chromatic Endpin yourself and don’t be afraid to experiment, even with things that seem pretty different. It sure beats drilling another hole in your bass!

Reading Session 2016-01-15

Saturday, January 23rd, 2016

It was a cold night, but we had a rewarding reading session on Friday, January 15.

People:

  • Marc Temkin
  • Bjorn Villesvik
  • Phillip Serna
  • Jacque Harper

This was great for me. Phillip and I have crossed paths a number of times over the years. At separate times, we were both students of Stephen Tramontozzi at the San Francisco Conservatory. But to my recollection, we had not played together. So it was good to do that. Marc is someone I met briefly many years ago at one of our early performances, but hadn’t seen since. He encouraged Bjorn to join us, and I’m glad he did. I’m always happy to expand my circle of colleagues.

Repertoire

  • Tomas Luis de Victoria, arr. Cameron – Three Spanish Motets
  • Tony Osborne – Sonnet for a Summer’s Day
  • Ernst Mahle – Quartet
  • Marc Temkin – work in progress
  • Serge Prokofiev, arr Serna – March from The Love of Three Oranges
  • Joseph Lauber – Quartet
  • Hindemith, arr Harper – Six Chansons
  • Wasserman – Pieces for Basses

The ensemble has read or performed all of these–except for Marc’s sketch, Tony Osborne’s ‘sonnet’ and the Wasserman piece–in the past, so I don’t have a lot of new comments on them. As always, it was energizing to be able to make music together.

I look forward to the opportunity to perform Sonnet for a Summer’s Day, in the hopes that I can encourage my wife to sing the soprano part. Rob Wasserman’s piece I’ve attempted to get through several times, but it seems to require more preparation than a pick-up reading session. I’m also not fond of the gimmick of the first movement being for a solo player, the second a duet, the third a trio etc. If I’ve gone to the trouble of finding five players, I want to make use of them. Marc’s work, completely and somewhat abashedly incomplete, shows promise. Always happy to read through something to give a composer a chance to hear ideas.

My only regret for the evening was that I failed to print out the parts for David Heyes’ work The Last Poppy. I really meant to. My apologies, David! Next time for sure.