Life and craft on the low end.
Contrabass Conversations treats the double bass as both a serious instrument and a whole way of moving through the world. Its interviews wander from rosin, fifths tuning, and hidden manuscripts to travel, community events, auditions, arranging, and the odd logistics of carrying a bass through daily life.
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Contrabass Conversations is a deep, unhurried interview show centered on the double bass and the people who build lives around it. The tone is warm and musician-to-musician. Jason Heath tends to begin with a personal connection, a gig memory, a travel aside, or a shared bass-world reference, then lets the guest settle into the details that shaped the work. Those details can get wonderfully specific. Recent episodes move through gut strings, early music, Haydn transcriptions, Baroque influence, rosin development, hidden Koussevitzky materials, IMSLP editions, and tools that sync sheet music PDFs with YouTube performances. The show does not treat technical vocabulary as a barrier. It treats it as the normal language of people who care about sound, repertoire, touch, and access. That makes the conversations feel unusually useful for serious players. It also keeps them human. A discussion of fifths tuning can sit beside a story about carrying a bass without a car. A conversation about the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto on double bass can open into cultural celebration, orchestral programming, and the patience required to champion a piece over time. Jazz episodes widen the frame with groove, drums, Manhattan School of Music, Berlin, London, and the shift from bass guitar into upright bass. Community is a recurring engine. The show makes room for Pacific Bass Day, the International Society of Bassists, George Vance camp memories, live Zoom events, substitute-player networks, women in music, teaching, online lessons, and the ordinary friendships behind a specialized musical field. It is not glossy arts coverage. It is a long table conversation for people who want the strange, hard, practical, beautiful work behind bass playing to be taken seriously.
Made for: Serious bassists, music students, teachers, composers, jazz and classical players, and dedicated double bass enthusiasts who enjoy patient craft talk. It also suits listeners curious about how working musicians build repertoire, community, tools, and careers.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart through its comfort with highly specific bass-world detail and its relaxed trust in long-form conversation. Technique, repertoire, technology, travel, teaching, and friendship all stay in the same frame.
Contrabass Conversations features interviews and performances from top leaders in the world of the double bass. Podcast host Jason Heath dives deep into what makes these world-class artists tick. With 2 million downloads and counting, Contrabass Conversations is the most popular podcast for double bassists. Join the community and experience life on the low end of the spectrum!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Jason Heath makes double-bass craft legible through musician interviews connecting technique, repertoire, teaching, and career decisions.
Contrabass Conversations turns the double bass into a doorway to musicians' working lives. Jason Heath interviews bassists, composers, conductors, and educators with an ear for the practical choices behind a sound: how drum practice shapes groove, why taking up upright bass can…
A rosin maker hopes one purchase will do; Jason Heath gives your bass questions room to roam.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A warm, musicianly conversation about reshaping early-music materials for the double bass.
Michal Belina's work lands in the productive middle ground between early music performance and new composition. The Poland-based bassist and composer moves between those practices with a clear sense of how repertoire changes once players put it in their hands: a Haydn sonata…
A bassist's search for tone becomes a conversation about practice, drums, and teaching.
Contrabass Conversations follows Marlon Martinez through a relaxed talk about how a sound is built from the ground up, with Stanley Clark, the practice-room grind, and the crossover between drum set work and bass playing all in view.
A bass-led conversation that treats Butterfly Lovers as serious repertoire with real weight.
Contrabass Conversations gives John Miedis room to present his arrangement of the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto for double bass and orchestra as a serious piece of work, not a novelty turn.
A practical bass story about necessity, craft, and making New York work.
Niklas Lukassen's conversation with Jason Heath traces a bass life shaped by movement: between London and Berlin, between bass guitar and upright, and between wanting to play jazz and learning what the scene actually demands.
A Christmas-concert ultimatum opens into bass playing, birdwatching, and the making of Shapeshifter.
A forced first meeting with the double bass gives this episode an easy way in: the guest was told he would play a Christmas concert within two months, even though he had never touched the instrument.
A warm, grounded conversation about helping bass learners move from first notes toward the jam session.
Matt Rybicki's Eight Weeks to the Jam Session - First Notes to Walking Like a Pro gives Contrabass Conversations a clear way to talk about the gap between wanting to play and knowing where to begin.
A grounded bassist conversation about craft, access, and sustaining niche musical work.
Isaac Trapkus brings several parts of his musical life into the same frame: playing bass in the New York Philharmonic, preparing bass editions for the Pedrucci Music Library, shaping a free Urtext edition from a Library of Congress score, and making Winter rosin by hand.
Classical recordings, patiently brought into focus.
Piano lessons, seen from the parent's side of the bench.
This episode features Gaelen McCormick discussing the evolution of double bass pedagogy, including her work on documenting its history in a new book.
Isaac Trapkus is back with another rabbit hole.
Matt Rybicki is back with a new course.
["Michal Belina says a Billy Joel \"Uptown Girl\" melody on the car radio became a solo double-bass fugue, part of an 11-piece cycle of preludes and fugues.", "Jason Heath interviews the Polish bassist-composer on Contrabass Conversations about early music, gut strings, and Baroque-style writing for double bass.", "Belina says early music in Poland has expanded into more chamber ensembles, gut-string quartets, and students than when he started.", "He also describes learning composition by analyzing scores, writing after his son goes to sleep, and balancing music with software development."]
This episode features Isaac Trapkus, a New York Philharmonic bassist, discussing his work on rosin development, open-source music tools like IMSLP, and AI integration in music workflows.
This episode features an interview with Thomas Zera about his new project, The Sub Pool, which aims to create a central platform connecting musicians who want to travel and play with various ensembles with personnel managers seeking substitute players.
This episode features an interview with bassist and artist Casey Lipka, discussing her work in music, her series on women in music, and the importance of in-person connections in the digital age.
This episode celebrates the music and legacy of composer Lloyd Goldstein, featuring interviews with his friends and students like Johnny Hamill, leading up to a live Zoom event.
Marlon Martinez joins Contrabass Conversations as Marlonius, and the talk opens with Stanley Clark, practice, and the old idea that if you think you have it, you practice again.
Jason Heath opens on John Miedis's arrangement of the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto for double bass and orchestra.
Jason Heath welcomes German bassist and composer Niklas Lukassen.
Jason Heath talks with Stockholm-based double bassist and composer John Henriksen of Contrabass Conversations about his new album Shapeshifter and his life in the Scandinavian jazz scene.
This episode features an interview with musician Stephanie Patterson about her inspiring transition from playing double bass to viola after 50 years, discussing the challenges and experiences of adapting to a new instrument.
This episode features an interview with Laura Camacho, a bassist, tango composer, and ethnomusicologist from Buenos Aires now based in Austin, discussing her new album 'Toto Tiempo Pasado' and her work in music.
This episode features an interview with Gary Upton discussing the craftsmanship, economics, and various projects behind Upton Bass, including bass making, strings, amplifiers, and rosin.
This episode features Gaelen McCormick discussing the evolution of double bass pedagogy and her contributions to a book documenting the history of teaching string instruments.