Though it produces a lovely low sound, the double bass used to be shunted off center stage and not taken seriously as a solo instrument.
In the 20th century, the double bass gained greater respect among composers. Today, musicians such as Jordan Anderson are sought after as double bass soloists.
Anderson is featured solo performer during a Monday concert called “Mahler First” as Cascade Symphony Orchestra kicks off the new year at Edmonds Center for the Arts.
At 31, Anderson is among the youngest members of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and its principal string bassist. He once said that he pursued the double bass not just because of its lovely sound but when he discovered he could, indeed, play solos.
“I realized you could go to school and study music, and if you were good enough, you could make a career out of it. I decided that is what I wanted to do. I have never had second thoughts,” Anderson told a Seattle newspaper back in 2004. “The bass’s reputation is not based on its solo capabilities. But when I realized I could do solo work along with the orchestra, I found the instrument even more compelling.”
Anderson will strut his double bass stuff during Johann Baptist Vanhal’s Concerto for Double Bass and Mahler’s “Titan” symphony, or Symphony No. 1 in D major.
Mahler wrote the third movement in that symphony featuring a double bass soloist performance, “distinguishing it as one of the few symphonic pieces to use the instrument in such a manner,” according to Wikipedia.
The orchestra is also performing Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Op. 62.
The double bass, or string bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument used in modern symphony orchestras.
Anderson, who has been playing music since he was 5, took up the double bass in fifth grade because, for the most part, no other student had. He also was drawn to the instrument’s size and its low sounds.
“There was something fun about playing something so big,” he said.
Anderson has been with Seattle Symphony since the fall of 2000. He has a bachelor’s degree in music from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Harold Robinson, principal bass of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has performed with the Emerson String Quartet and Leon Fleisher, as well as with the Seattle Chamber Music Society. In 2007, Anderson won the solo division of the David Walter Memorial Composition Competition with his piece “Drafts” for solo double bass and piano.
Cascade Symphony music director Michael Miropolsky is leading the orchestra in his eighth season.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
