Double Bass Chris Hannulik

[Dr Rod]

Has anybody worked with Chris Hannulik? (spelling ??)

I was interested in his left hand technique philosophy. I heard that he even vibrates Mozart exerpts. It is not possible to hear vibratto when you are playing that fast so I am wondering if there is a reason for this.

Any other comments about him are welcome.

 

[PaulCannon]

I studied with him for four weeks at Aspen a couple years ago. He is an insanely good player. He gets one of the biggest, fattest sounds I've ever heard out of his bass.

I don't recall him ever talking to me about his vibrato technique. He generally spends most of his time talking about whatever specific piece you're working on. He seemed very musically-minded and not as concerned with technique.

 

[JayR]

I met with him for a lesson a couple of weeks ago when I was down in southern california looking at schools to transfer to (I applied to UCLA). He was a really great guy, amazing player. I played the Dragonetti concerto for him and the bourrees from the 3rd bach suite, and in the course of a few minutes he helped me fix things I had been slaving away on for months trying to correct. He picked up my bass and played it 100% in tune across the fingerboard without any of the adjustment time most bass players require to get in tune when playing an unfamiliar instrument. I also played the Koussevitzky Chanson Triste for him and he discussed vibrato with me pretty extensively. He's definitely not a proponent of vibrato-every-note, he spoke pretty extensively on his beliefs about varying speed and width and presence of vibrato within a piece of music to achieve different statements. I was playing the whole thing with a pretty unchanging vibrato, and he made some really interesting points about differentiating the phrases by using different feelings of vibrato to project musical feelings of hesitance and then confidence and such. On the bach suite he just used vibrato to accent the important notes in each phrase, and it certainly wasn't an every note sort of thing. Frankly, if you ask me, I really hope I win the UCLA audition so I can study with this guy. My two cents.

 

[Peter Ferretti]

Chris is an amazing teacher. Enough said. I have been studying wiht him weekley since september, and plan to for the rest of the high school. My solo playing has at least trippled since then. He is an aggressive player, but that seems to be the norm in the orchestral these days. I worked on some mozart excepts with hime last month, figaro, 35, and 40, and he didn't tell me to use vibrato on the overture, and did tell me to use vibrato on 35 and 40 in the long notes. It's just not practical to use in on the runs. I strongly reccomend studying with him to anyone.