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<font class="navHeader">KARRKAMP: <font class="navOn">Overview</font> | <a href="review.html" class="nav" target="main">Review</a></font>
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<img src="../graphics/karrkamp_02.jpg" border=0 width=293 height=147 align="right" hspace=14 vspace=10><img src="../graphics/headers/drop_c.gif" border=0 width=48 height=57 align="left" hspace=4 vspace=4><p>oncert celebrates double bass values.
<p>by Deryk Barker</p>
<p>The largest double bass ever made was build by one Paul de Wit for the Cincinnati music festival of 1889; it was 4.18 metres high. I can only imagine the sound made by this huge instrument (perhaps it was played from the inside? or by a team of musicians?), or by J.B. Vuillaume's enormous three-stringed "octobass" of 1851; but I cannot imagine that either instrument produced as massive, solid and musical a sound as that produced by the massed basses (all 17 of them) of Karr Kamp on Tuesday night at Phillip T Young Recital Hall.</p>
<p>This was the fifth annual concert celebrating and showcasing the instrument and its players, the students at Gary Karr's unique summer school. The mix was similar to previous years, with opening Bach chorale, played by Karr and pianist Harmon Lewis onstage, with the other players ranged around the hall, was as all-enveloping and indeed moving as ever.</p>
<p>The ensemble pieces included a very jolly concerto by Boismortier — I particularly enjoyed the lumbering <i>gigue</i> of a final — a handful of lively secular pieces from the renaissance and several gorgeously lush arrangements of popular songs. In the very last of these, <i>You'll Never Walk Alone</i>, the massed playing of the melody line in unison harmonics brought shivers to the spine.</p>
<p>Karr and Harmon Lewis played <i>Romance with a Double-bass</i>, Alice Spatz's adaptation of Chekhov's short story, a work which enraptured and amused the audience and which could easily take an entire review to itself.</p>
<p>Bottesini's Grand Duo Concertante is something of a chestnut in doublebass circles, although there can have been few performance quite so animated and uproarious as that which Karr, Lewis and Sharon Stanis gave. Stanis and Karr hammed it up wonderfully, proving once again (if proof were still required) that serious musicians can have fun too. Which might just as well stand as the motto for the entire evening.</p>
<p>The players: Stephane Boutrit, Jonathan Camps, Alex Macrae, Haigh Manoukian, Kotomi Masuda, Gary Karr, Joshua Needleman, Yoshiko Nishimura, Bruce Okrainec, Stephanie Payne, Thomas Spencer, Mary Rannie, Peggy Tong, Satako Waizumi, Derek Wilkins, Sarah Wood: double bass; Harmon Lewis, piano; Sharon stanis, violin; Shinji Karr-Lewis, canino-bass.</p></font>
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