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Welcome to my website which is now redesigned to feature my music only. In recent years I have been focusing more and more on solo playing and my 3 string double bass. Most of the solo music I am playing is free improvisation or what used to be called avant-garde. I see it as a musical equivalent of the abstract visual art I have been making for years. In fact I think I am as influenced by visual concepts and artists such as David Smith, Hans Arp and Ben Nicholson as any music I hear. The musicians who inspire me the most are the ones who play like themselves, with real humanity, in particular players such as Red Garland, Django Reinhart, Red Mitchell, Lol Coxhill, Edicson Ruiz and many many more. In recent times I have been very influenced by the double bass philosophy of Korneel Le Compte. I could never get close to the way he plays, but his wide ranging ideas have given me the confidence to explore. I still enjoy playing most styles of jazz and mainly use my 4 string for more conventional music. It is a wonderful utilitarian warhorse that has never let me down. I gave up playing modern bows some years ago; I have a large collection of old Dragonetti bows and I play them all. They all have different personalities and help me improvise in different ways. Like most of us, Covid 19 affected me in many ways. The way I work, or worked was totally disrupted and the enforced time out made me rethink a lot of what I do or did. A lot of friends and colleagues were lost during the pandemic and of course venues have struggled to recover; it’s been a wake up call like no other. I don’t want to go back to how things were before and so I’m trying to find a new way for myself. I don’t enjoy the way musicians have had to use the internet and in particular social media and even this relatively low tech website is not really what I’m interested in. So I’m hoping to play the double bass, bass guitar, bass ukulele and sound processing equipment in better ways and for better reasons. I hope you enjoy having a look around this website; if you would like to talk please get in touch. For a selected musical CV click here My visual art can now be seen at www.cowriebay.com |
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