Convention schedule

Seven days at the Eastman School of Music. June 2 through June 8, all of it within a few blocks of Gibbs Street in downtown Rochester. The compact layout keeps travel between sessions to a few minutes. We expect approximately 1,300 bassists from more than thirty countries. Few attend the full week. Most arrive for selected days and leave when their own performance schedules demand it.

A typical day

The daily pattern holds all week, though the content changes. Coffee Talks open each morning. Players gather early to argue over strings, setups, and equipment, and these conversations often prove as useful as the formal sessions that follow. Master classes, workshops, panels, and the day’s competition round fill the midday hours. An evening concert anchors every night at eight. The ISB After Hours sessions carry on in the smaller rooms well past the final curtain. They tend to produce some of the week’s most memorable playing.

Evening concerts

Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, on Gibbs Street. 8 pm nightly. $20 at the door. The Eastman box office also sells them in advance. No convention badge is required. The hall is open to the full Rochester public, and the Tuesday and Friday lineups in particular should draw a sizable local audience.

  • Tuesday, June 4. Brett Shurtliffe, Yung-Chiao Wei, and Ron Carter, with Russell Malone and Donald Vega.
  • Wednesday, June 5. Talking Hands. The quartet is John Clayton, Rufus Reid, Lynn Seaton, and Martin Wind.
  • Thursday, June 6. Diana Gannett, followed by the Chuck Israels octet.
  • Friday, June 7. Szymon Marciniak and Dave Holland.
  • Saturday, June 8. Joel Quarrington and Victor Wooten.

Competitions

Competition rounds occupy the first half of the week, and the building feels different during those days. Preliminaries begin Sunday. Finals are Monday and Tuesday. Diana Gannett of the University of Michigan chairs the jury. Five divisions are scheduled. Solo, jazz, and orchestral are open to players aged 19-30. Two younger divisions accept ages 15-18 and 14 and under. The Maker’s Competition is separate. New instruments are judged Monday and Tuesday in a dedicated room that the luthiers claim as their own for the week.

The prize money is worth the preparation, even if few enter for financial reasons alone.

Competition prizes

  • Gary Karr Prize. $2,500, solo division.
  • Scott LaFaro Prize. $2,500, jazz division, plus an Acoustic Image amplifier and a 2015 opening appearance.
  • Second and third, jazz. $1,000 and $750 from Thomastik-Infeld.

Daytime sessions

The daytime program fills the long stretch between breakfast and the 8 pm concert, and it is the convention’s true center. A master class places one student across from a soloist who may have flown in from another continent. The level of instruction is difficult to replicate outside this week. Bow technique, amplification, orchestral excerpts, and career development are among the workshop offerings. Two longer threads extend across the full week. The Historically Informed Performance Symposium is devoted to gut strings and period instruments. The New Music Summit brings composers and bassists together over pieces still being written.

College Fair Day reserves a block of time for students to meet university bass programs and faculty. The exhibition hall remains open all week. Luthiers, bow makers, publishers, and string dealers fill it with instruments and equipment worth several visits.

Registration and tickets

Registration takes place at a desk inside the school. The badge admits the holder to the full daytime program. Passes are available by the week or by the day, and students and international members pay a reduced rate. Family members who are not attending sessions are admitted at no charge. The convention’s mobile app is new this year. It publishes room changes and the daily schedule to attendees’ phones, a clear improvement over the paper schedule it replaces. Concert tickets are a separate purchase, available by phone at 454-2100 or through the Eastman website.