This weekend we're putting out our Orchestral Excerpts Breakdown episode featuring double bassist John Grillo. John discusses each of these excerpts--stylistic considerations, differences in articulation and bow strokes, and suggestions for effectively learning them--and then performs them. I believe that this project will be a highly valuable resource for bassists worldwide, and I'd love your feedback on this project!

Head on over to the site (follow the links below) to check it out--It'll go out on Sunday 9/29/07.

Just out of curiosity, does John play french or german bow?

John Grillo is a French bow player. We just put the episode out. You can check it out through the following link:

http://contrabassconversations.com/?p=58

The project is around 1 hr and 20 minutes total. We covered the following excepts (a little chatter about each one followed by John performing the excerpt):

Beethoven Symphony No. 9
Beethoven Symphony No. 5
Brahms Symphony No. 1
Brahms Symphony No. 2
Shostakovich Symphony No. 5
Mozart Symphony No. 35
Mozart Symphony No. 39
Mahler Symphony No. 2
Schubert Symphony No. 9
Strauss Ein Heldenleben
Britten Young Person's Guide
Verdi Otello

Jason,

What a great resource for the excerpts! I am in the process of learning the first two excerpts - Beethoven's 9th and 5th. This has already become a good resource to check my progress and make sure I am on the right track, especially since my lesson is not until Monday.

I am going to be working on excerpts all year at school, so I expect I will be referring to this podcast often.

This was my first visit to contrabassconversations.com. Looking forward to listening to the othe podcasts.

Great to hear that this excerpt project is proving to be useful to you! We've got some other projects like this happening at the moment, including a series of video lessons (http://www.doublebassblog.org/2007/10/virtual-lesson-with-andrew-anderson_05.html) with Lyric Opera of Chicago bassist Andy Anderson.

Thanks again for checking out the show!