Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog » Search Results » label/cats

Some cats like to say hello

Jason — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 11:59:00 +0000

Totally unrelated to bass (but that’s OK, there are still only 35 total cat posts out of nearly 2000 posts on this blog!), but this cat is awesome. I love talking cats.

My cats wake me up this way every single day (!)

Jason — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:19:00 +0000

Not even a whiff of double bass in this post, aside from the fact that so many bassists seem to have cats. My wife Courtney sent me a copy of this extremely cute video last week, and after also getting a copy from Holly Mulcahy, I decided that it just had to go on the blog.

You can view all the bass blog cat posts here. Even if it seems like there are a lot of them, they account for only 1-2% of all posts (which shows you just how many posts there are here on the blog!).

Orchestra Musicians = Zoo Animals

Jason — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:56:00 +0000

Violinist Holly Mulcahy (who has suggested many a good cat video for this blog) wrote an excellent post on The Partial Observer about how a career as a professional orchestra musician can make one feel like a zoo animal. Holly has been a member of several professional orchestras, including the Richmond Symphony and the Delaware Symphony. Here is a snippet from her post:

If anyone would have told me that 15 years into a career as a professional orchestra musician might make me feel like a zoo animal I would have laughed in their face. Nevertheless, 15 years into my career and that’s exactly how I feel, or at least that’s how it seems for some of the time.

A number of factors contribute to this. First, as a single member of up to 100 performers, you come across as a nameless, faceless member of a collective. Add to that being a member of the most predominant instrument in any orchestra, a violinist, you have even less of an identity. Then there’s all the black and white we have to wear; after some time, you can feel like an anonymous zebra walking out into your pen eating the same grass day after day. At the same, time, most musicians are somewhat prepared for this reality since being a part of a large ensemble is something they’ve actively prepared for most of their life.

Click here for the complete post from Holly.

Holly offer a great analysis of orchestra “adoption” programs, where a patron will contribute a certain amount of money and be paired with an orchestra musician for the season. This “adoption” will be listed in the program, and the musician will typically be invited to several donor events throughout the season, sitting at a table with their paired patrons.

These kind of programs can often be a good thing. The IRIS Orchestra, for example, has a program that in some ways resembles this model, only with genuine, long-term pairings with families, and without the financial element, fostering genuine bonds between performers and audience members. Too often, however, these programs end up serving as thinly-veiled revenue generation tools. Holly delves into this sticky subject with great insight, and I encourage readers to check out her complete post.

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The world’s worst cat video

Jason — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 17:21:00 +0000

I love posting about the kitties, although I try to keep it to a minimum. There have only been 26 posts about cats out of nearly 1200 posts, so I don’t think this is too bad a ratio.

Anyway, this video definitely falls into the “so bad it’s good” category. It’s a montage of cats dancing in very scary ways to various tunes. (No embed code…sorry)

new footage of Nora the piano-playing cat

Jason — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:30:00 +0000

Violinist Holly Mulcahy recently sent me a link to this new, even cuter video featuring Nora the cat playing the piano. You can click here for the original video. The startling thing about these videos is how obviously Nora enjoys playing the piano. She is definitely communicating with humans through the instrument.

Also, she really likes major 2nds, and she really likes white keys. No pentatonic scales for Nora, I guess.

If you’ve just gotta have more cat footage, you can always click my ‘cats‘ tab at the top of the blog to view all cat-related posts (or just click here).

New CSO Bass Blog Post – ‘Trout’ Fingerings

Jason — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 14:57:00 +0000

Michael Hovnanian just did a post about some fingering options for the ‘Trout’ Quintet. He mentions not often using the A harmonic on the D string in passage work (sorry, non-bass folks–click the Cats tab if your eyes are glazing over), and he cites one of the Ein Heldenleben arpeggios as another example of a place to not use the A harmonic.

Be sure to check out the comments of this and other posts on Michael’s blog. He gets a lot of comments on his posts, and they can often be quite opinionated.Since I studied with Michael for both of my performance degrees, these fingerings are exactly what I do, so it is interesting to hear people disagree with them.