The Bad Boys of Bass: Lensky's Aria with Diana Gannett

This video shows five basses playing a quintet of Lensky's Aria (Tchaikovsky, arranged by R. J. Spear) with soloist Diana Gannett. The demonstration includes five basses, four of which are plate-tuned using the methods of the late Dr. C. M. Hutchins. Also included in the group are a low-B sub-contrabass and a chamber bass in high fifths tuning by luthier Robert J. Spear. The bass in the center is the original small bass prototype from the New Violin Family developed by Dr. Hutchins. This performance was done with only a few hour's rehearsal, and is posted with the permission of the musicians. Several of the players are using instruments with non-standard tuning. Audio is from the camera microphones, which roll off at 100 Hz, while the lowest note of the sub-contra is around 32 Hz. No problems hearing this big boy, though.

For more information about the New Violin Family:
http://nvfa.org
http://hutchinsconsort.org
http://octavivo.org
http://singingwoodsviolin.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Contrabass
• Bad
• Boys
• Gannett
• Stoops
• Orhon
• Sharpe
• Murray
• Spear
• Hutchins
• Tchaikovsky
• Lensky
• Lenski
• bassists
• New
• Violin
• Family

[octavivo]

"Plates" are what makers call the top and the back of the instrument, usually when they are "free," meaning not yet glued to the ribs (the plates, not the makers :-). The "tuning" part refers to the method particular to "graduating" (thinning) the plates so that they have minimum mass and maximum response. At least three of the basses were plate-tuned according to the Hutchins method. Glad you enjoyed the video!

[frcwolf]

Beautiful playing by all. One can very much hear the influence Mr. Karr still has in terms of sound production, vibrato and performance style. What a nice collection of "misfit" instruments! I never heard the term "plate-tuned" before so I'll have to do some research. Thanks for posting this.