joel quarrington

Joel Quarrington

A hallway chat about bass tunings has led to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra landing the world premiere for a rare composition for double bass, writes ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN

 

Double bassists are the grunts of the orchestra, who support everything and seldom get to shine on their own. There are about 200 concertos for double bass sitting in the world’s music libraries, but even most bass players can name only a handful, and not one is by a major composer.

So when Joel Quarrington , principal bassist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, heard that American composer John Harbison was writing a concerto for solo bass, he hurried off to a concert at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre (where he has also played principal bass with the NAC Orchestra) of chamber music by Harbison, who is best known for his opera The Great Gatsby.

The composer was in the hall, so Quarrington, who is a much better player than diplomat, confronted him in a hallway afterwards and began to air his views about the pros and cons of various systems of bass tuning. It’s a subject so near to his heart that he forgot to introduce himself.

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Red Mitchell

Written by:  Gene Lees

The great jazz musician Red Mitchell was the first bassist in more modern times to use fifth tuning. Unfortunately I never met him before his death in 1992, but he was working fairly often in Toronto with another jazz great, Don Thompson. Don must have told Red about me, because Red phoned me whenever he passed by this way and he would regale me with stories of his incredible life and his experiences with fifths tuning.

I am very pleased that the famous jazz writer Gene Lees has allowed me to reprint some of his interview with the real fifths legend and pioneer Red Mitchell. This excerpt is from Mr. Lees outstanding book “Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White” from Da Capo press 2001.

All the interviews in the book originally appeared in Mr. Lees “Jazzletter” which is easily subscribed to;

Jazzletter PO Box 240, Ojai CA 93024-0240 (12 issues a year, 70$ a year)

Or e-mail; genelees@sbcglobal.net This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

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Written by Stewart Hoffman in Performance Magazine (Winter 2005)

It’s a brilliant afternoon, and at Parry Sound’s Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts, bassist Joel Quarrington is performing a Dvorak quintet as if his life depended on it.  Which is nothing unusual for Quarrington.  That’s just the way he plays – absolutely focused, breathing along with each phrase as he digs his bow deep down into the thick strings of his instrument.  The rich sound Quarrington produces provides a musical foundation that’s as solid as the hall’s exposed stone and timber.

The Dvorak is being performed with the New Zealand String Quartet, a collaboration forged by Festival Of The Sound director James Campbell.  The quartet’s cellist, Rolf Gjelsten, recalls that when Campbell first called him in Wellington, he asked: “How would you like to play with the best bass player in the world?”  There’s no indication that Gjelsten feels he was misled.

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Written by Barb McDougall in Double Bassist Magazine

Joel Quarrington has expanded the boundaries of bass playing as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral principal. Barb McDougall went to Toronto to find out more.Preceded by generations of musical ancestors, Joel Quarrington had learned to play several instruments by the age of 12 and his small size didn’t prevent him – with the help of a step ladder – from deciding to learn the double bass. According to his older brother, novelist and screen playwright Paul, Joel chose the bass because he reasoned “the double bass is big and anyone who plays it must be big and therefore if I were to play the double bass I must myself be big”.

Quarrington claims he was rather unambitious as a youngster. But watching his teacher Tom Monohan playing first chair in the Toronto Symphony bass section every Sunday afternoon gave him what he felt was a reasonable goal: to one day play in the section. He achieved that and more, becoming the Symphony’s principal bassist in 1991. En route, he has carved out a solo and chamber music career and rolled forward the very frontiers of bass playing. But it was a rude musical shock as a teenager that led Quarrington to strive so hard.

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