Hello everybody. I'm a pro bass player in the UK - been a staff musician for the BBC for 38 years, mainly on classical double bass. But I have always played bass guitar - in all styles, but mostly jazz oriented these days. Looking forward to some lively debate with you all !
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Hello from the UK
- Thread starter Major-Minor
- Start date
hello from another brit!
you have some serious credentials, i'm sure you'll be very welcome here. hope all's well with you in the current round of job cuts at the Beeb.
you have some serious credentials, i'm sure you'll be very welcome here. hope all's well with you in the current round of job cuts at the Beeb.
Hi there knumbskull (great name!). I'm hopeful for the future at the BBC. But you never know...
We had a 9 week musicians union strike in 1980 as the Beeb cut down from 10 orchestras to the current 5. They got rid of all the light music bands - great shame.
But they are currently building a new studio for my orch so I think the future is OK in the medium term. I will have to retire in 7 years so I'm hopeful the orch will survive that long (that's a rather selfish point of view I have to admit).
Politically it would be very hard for a Public Service Broadcaster to cease its support for "serious" music.
But certainly the salaries paid to musos these days are pretty poor. I have to do lots of extra gigs and education work to sustain a reasonable standard of living. Mind you, I really enjoy doing stuff outside the classical domain. If I didn't do a decent jazz gig every couple of weeks I'd go mad !
I played with a 10 piece function band last saturday - all styles but mostly pop - I was in seventh heaven !
This week we are doing 3 concerts at The Royal Albert Hall (the Proms) in London - should be fun. Its a great Hall to play in - fantastic atmosphere. And I'm playing bass guitar in one item - a sort of Community project - 160 amateurs with 10 of us pros - all semi-improvised (nothing actually written down anyway).
We had a 9 week musicians union strike in 1980 as the Beeb cut down from 10 orchestras to the current 5. They got rid of all the light music bands - great shame.
But they are currently building a new studio for my orch so I think the future is OK in the medium term. I will have to retire in 7 years so I'm hopeful the orch will survive that long (that's a rather selfish point of view I have to admit).
Politically it would be very hard for a Public Service Broadcaster to cease its support for "serious" music.
But certainly the salaries paid to musos these days are pretty poor. I have to do lots of extra gigs and education work to sustain a reasonable standard of living. Mind you, I really enjoy doing stuff outside the classical domain. If I didn't do a decent jazz gig every couple of weeks I'd go mad !
I played with a 10 piece function band last saturday - all styles but mostly pop - I was in seventh heaven !
This week we are doing 3 concerts at The Royal Albert Hall (the Proms) in London - should be fun. Its a great Hall to play in - fantastic atmosphere. And I'm playing bass guitar in one item - a sort of Community project - 160 amateurs with 10 of us pros - all semi-improvised (nothing actually written down anyway).
