hi it's Geoff Chalmers here from discoverdoublebass.com which is
the home of online lessons and courses to learn about the double bass so if you want to improve
your playing maybe you're new or more experienced bass player please go and check it out we've got
music for or lessons and courses for classical players jazz bass players all sorts of different
things happening over there and we have a range of different tutors as well and one of them is
the fantastic Joseph Conyers so it's great to have you with me today Joseph happy to be here
yeah now i'm sure that you know already uh that Joseph is a member of the Philadelphia
orchestra and i always he's a basically associate principal associated acting associated complicated
yeah okay so you're playing in one of the best bass sections in the world and you're sat up there
next to Hal Robinson yes and you've obviously auditioned a lot yourself i would imagine to
get to that position and you've also been on the board on the panel auditioning people coming in
and seeing the different candidates so i wondered if you could speak to us a little bit about
the bass players that have come in that have presented really well that have engaged with
you when you've been on the panel and what their qualities are we're all trying to kind of improve
our auditions and get further so maybe what you what you say might be able to help us to do that
sure it's a great question Geoff and actually i wouldn't say this only pertains to the bass
section i think it's actually something that that i in any audition i'm i'm looking for
there are so many talented musicians out there and maybe that's something your audience doesn't
want to hear because they want to be like the only one you can't win a job but the level is very high
um it's rising i feel like every year every generation it definitely gets better and better
but the things that always stick out uh are the things that have always i think stuck out
since the 40s and 50s and that is knowledge of knowledge of score and let me quantify that
when someone plays i don't want to hear their part i want to hear the
orchestra because whenever someone's playing an excerpt it's part of a much bigger picture
having played in the orchestra for now many years we these nuances these little how how we breathe
and have like a space between phrases these are things that are embodied in our performance and
in our awareness when we're performing with each other if a candidate plays perfectly every note in
tune perfectly in time but does not exhibit that those nuances the playing sounds foreign it sounds
it sounds good but it sounds foreign and generally what i end up writing down on my on my um
sheet is very strong player inexperienced question mark like i it makes me question whether or not
they they've been in the orchestral environment so they're they're playing as informed by the
greater picture and you want to be able to hear that yes they you can hear that they understand
the piece that they're playing in the context within the piece that's it's the most important
thing otherwise it's just a bunch of notes which i mean could sound great but may not necessarily
sound like the composer that they're supposed to be conveying in that moment so what about things
perhaps that you hear that you you don't like the students do or sorry it's the students candidates
right for the audition what what is that that may be some pet peeves that perhaps we can
we can we can bypass and avoid in our auditions but is there anything well the opposite of that if
they play with absolutely no musical yeah musical affect that might be it i mean i think let me um
uh get rid of another stigma i think a lot of those who are taking auditions might be thinking
of everyone feels like they're being judged by the people behind the screen we aren't trying
to judge you we're rooting for you we want to hear good music i mean you have no idea what it's like
to sit in a room behind the screen and listen to people play the same five or six excerpts from sun
up to sundown so at some point we're actually looking we want to be inspired we want to hear
something that that makes us not think about oh they didn't play that rest again oh they play
that note too we want to make we want someone to have us forget about all of that and just
enjoy the music that they're making because it reminds us of the great music that we enjoy making
as professionals have you ever when you've gone further down the line with the audition and and
the candidates and you learn who they are in fact at what point do you learn who the candidates are
it must be it's various with different orchestras Philadelphia we are blind all the way through the
finals so interesting yeah and even in the first round of finals it's still behind the screen
we could have something called super finals generally i feel like i'm almost everywhere unless
there's a really big stand out and there's just higher that's that's very rare generally there's
a super final when it's down to basically one i mean two maybe three candidates and that's when
they'll drop the screen and that's when you know who the candidate is wow yeah fascinating it's
it's the experience i personally uh we're we're musicians and we're so used to kind of bearing
ourselves at least that's the way i think of it as a musician bearing ourselves as players
sometimes bearing your soul to a screen is very difficult i actually enjoy when the screen comes
down because then i'm looking at people and i can actually play for them and i sometimes identify
someone i'm like oh let me play for and try to connect because these are things Geoff that a lot
of players who are taking auditions i think forget they are because they if they aren't playing for
people they're almost playing for themselves and so worried about doing this or making this um
in in our orchestra i may all speak about Philadelphia i mean it's not a
it's not about the perfection it's it's i mean you have to play in tune in in time that is important
but um it really is about the music-making and that developed
the whole of the musician uh that we want to have as a colleague on the stage I think that's
a fantastic point to wrap this up Joe thank you so much for joining me and Joe has filmed
a wonderful uh set of lessons for discover double bass all about orchestral excerpts we talk about
the foundations of orchestral technique uh many different aspects the right hand the left hand
so we'll provide a link for all of that below you can go and check that out and of course, check out
Joe's Instagram account as well because we just love following him over there he plays a lot of
really cool excerpts so if you're an orchestral bass player you're going to want to see what he's
up to so thanks so much for watching at home Joe thanks for joining me today my pleasure