Golden Gate Bridges

There used to be only one gleaming bridge in San Francisco. Now there are innumerable ones - gleaming on the tops of proud young bassists' instruments thanks to a pioneering collaboration between the city's Symphony Orchestra and bass teacher Barry Green.
It was hack in the mid-1990s that the San Francisco Symphony's education department realised it was witnessing a particularly acute problem. No matter how many young violinists ancl cellists, horn players and clarinetists stepped forward to audition for its youth orchestra, there was a serious shortage of bassists. Perceptions of the bass as clumsy, cumbersome, lacking solo repertoire and expensive to buy all played a part in the paucity of players.

If the mountain would not go to Mohammed, then the Mohammeds of northern California were determined to tackle the seemingly mountainous task ahead of them: getting a new generation of players from the local area up, about and bassing happily
Enter Green, former principal bassist with the Cincinnati Symphony and an ex-ISB President. A native Californian, Green had decided to move back home in 1995. The timing couldn't have been better The San Francisco Symphony had been putting feelers out for a bass teacher who could direct their pet project. A local hassist, Stephen Tramontozzi, recommended Green, whose books and videos have become best-sellers in the bass pedagogy field.

It didn't take long for Green and the orchestra to cement a relationship. It was no surprise that Green committed himself to the idea with a vengeance. What really came as a shock, though, was just how quickly and with what enthusiasm local schools took to the idea. Much of the Success of the project can be put down to Green's charisma and shrewd marketing talents. With his time being sponsored by tho Symphony's education programme, he was determined not to waste hard-earned and fought-for cash by directing the programme at the wrong schools. It meant some tough decisions: only those kids at schools with active music programmes would benefit from the new scheme. After consulting with various teachers and educationalists in the San Francisco Bay Area he settled on three middle schools - Stanley in Lafayette, Miller Creek in Terra Linda and Davidson in San Rafael. He made sure that all ofthe schools fed into high schools with expanded music programmes because he did not want to start young players who would not be encouraged to continue. And he was looking for supportive parents willing and able to afford after-school lessons for their kids.
" Schools have not provided music programmes, so I'm going with the kids who have a musical element already," he explains. "They usually are at a school that still has an orchestra - otherwise, there would be no point working with them, they would simply not grow. But I'm not just working with kids from the San Francisco area - there are a lot from San Jose, two in the East Bay region and one in Marin County.

'I decide how my time is divided on the programme,' Green explains. 'Most of it is on group instruction, some is private or semi-private. The idea is to focus on the kids with the most talent. I have 28 private students and a further 25 in groups. Certainly the group contact gets them more involved.'

So the Symphony had found its teacher and found an eager pool of young talents to train up. Now all it needed was enough basses. Again, the choice of schools proved crucial. Lafayette had an obvious advantage - an abundance of basses. The school's director of music, Bob Athayde, has loaned school-owned basses to most of Green's students but still keeps four in the music room. It means kids can practice at home and at school. And they don't have to worry about carting a cumbersome instrument all the way home each day At Stanley, kids have daily band or orchestra practise and classes. For Green that was a critical factor in deciding where to focus his energies. He can spend most of his time teaching bass technique and leave the essential but more mundane music theory to Athayde.

'In terms of the provision of instrumonts, Stanley Middle School has the most affluent music programme in the area. If a kid takes private lessons the school's music director is able to buy them a bass - so they have an instrument at home and another at school. At the one school there are nine private students. And another five or six are in the group programme. They have about eight instruments at school and around nine at home for private lessons. I have been able to set up the instruments as I like.'

Now other schools are adopting a similar approach of buying instruments, removing one of the largest financial headaches for parents and enabling eager young musicians to concentrate on what matters - the music.

'School instruments are usually a real problem,' acknowledges Green. 'But there are basses now where there have not been basses before. Another five kids are going to buy basses in the area - without this project that would simply never have happened.'

But it's not just the students and the Symphony that are benefiting. With the explosion of interest in bass playing, there's been an inevitable growth in demand for sheet music, books, instruments, repairs, even recordings. In short, a small but committed sector of the economy is being given a much needed cash injection. If anyone doubts the argument, Green relates one story to prove the point: 'One of my students bought a Korean instrument with an ebony fingerboard and padded fibreglass case for $1,500 all in. The supplier sold out of them in one week.'

To adopt the Californian vernacular, bass playing was suddenly 'cool'. The next stage was to raise the public profile of the project. Green decided to hold a Bass Bash at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco in December 1995, gathering renowned soloists, professional jazz and classical players and his students for a day of learning, laughing, leisure and study. It also marked one of the most important debuts for young Green students - the four-strong Lafayette Womens Bass Quartet, featuring four of Green's pupils ranging in age from nine to 14. The Bass Bashes have become a regular fixture of Green's teaching approach.

Last August, he joined forces with Francois Rabbath for Bass Bash 3 and the Bass Bonanza. It brought hundreds of students, professionals teachers and friends of the bass to San Francisco for two weeks of courses, concerts and workshops. Guests included Francois Rabbath, Ray Brown, Rob Wasserman, Paul Ellison, Dave Young and Don Hermans in addition to the San Francisco Symphony's own Bay Bass Band - Tramontozzi, Karen Homer and Paul Beaudry.

The third Bass Bash kicked off with 30 bassists aged 10 to 1# attending a five-day Golden Gate Bass Camp directed by Green and featuring Rabbath as guest clinician. The course was held at Headlands Conference Center. Daily Jazz classes, orchestra repertoire, technique classes, bass chamber music, large ensembles and practising sessions rounded out an in-depth exposure to Rabbath's principles of movement, bow technique, string crossings, standing position, pivot and crab system, and his beautiful concept of sound.

A highlight of the course was the sold-out August 30th Bass Bonanza Concert in San Francisco at Old First Church in which Brown, Rabbath and the Bay Bass Band appeared. Rob Wasserman, who happens to live in the San Fransisco Bay Area, also featured. Wasserman enlightened many at the Bass Bash with explanations of his improvisation style, including a demonstration of his music on two electronic basses.

The Bass Bashes have become an unmissable event on the California bass calendar. Another jamboree called All About Bass took place from the 18th to 19th January this year which brought together Paul Ellison and Dave Young, in a free event being sponsored by a local music store.

" On the 19th there were two musical interludes and six lectures," explains Green. "This kind of programme is unheard of anywhere else Now we are developing plans for our week-long adult course in June which will be followed by a week-long youth course."
Green is confident that the project will go from strength to strength: 'Until now the bass has so often been overlooked or left out because its music is frequently less interesting than other instruments and there's a shortage of actual instruments on which to perform. In a sense, the fact that the San Francisco Symphony had to launch this programme reflects a general deterioration in education standards and programmes in California. Thanks to Title 13, a property tax initiative, significant sums of money were lost from public funds. That left far less for things like arts education programmes and music programmes specifically, which were decimated. But Californians have experienced the worst cuts in the country so we're also ahead in terms of how to address the practical difficulties.'