[MUSIC PLAYING]
BLAKE HINSON: Hi my name is Blake Hinson.
I play double bass with the New York Philharmonic.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I was drawn to the bass.
I've always loved the low tones.
Whenever I play piano in college,
for a supplementary piano, I would
tend to put things down the [? octave, ?]
just because it felt more at home for me.
So I don't know, the voice always spoke to me.
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I mean, they're all fantastic.
They're all great.
And they all have so many varied skills,
which is what makes it so beautiful to play
in this section.
And also, just growing as a session player.
Learning the deeper undertones of what
it means to be a section player, what your role is.
I mean, an orchestra is such a strange--
it's a being in itself.
It's like a single cell organism with many little bits working
together.
And it can't function without everybody working together.
So playing in the Phil, it's a very enlightening experience
in that sense.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
West Side.
Xbox.
Stravinsky.
Definitively cats.
Oh, no.
Oh, I can't choose between those fellows, man.
They're too special.
My first concert with the New York Phil
was the Rite of Spring.
There was a portion where, in my part,
there's a famous thing where the bass clarinet goes
yup-up-up-up-um, bum.
And then there's supposed to be a grand pause.
And then the basses go--
[PLAYING NOTE]
But what happened is, I didn't have
the grand pause on my part.
And so it goes yup-up-up-up-um, bum, [BASS NOTE]..
And Allen is up here.
And he just does this, and then he cues, and then we went away.
And I turned red, and he was, uh--
yeah, it was probably the scariest moment
of my life to date.
[ORCHESTRA MUSIC PLAYING]