Bertram Turetzky
Encyclopedia
Bertram Turetzky is a contemporary American double bass
(contrabass) soloist, teacher, and author of The Contemporary Contrabass (1974, 1989), a book that looked at a number of new and interesting ways of playing the double bass including featuring it as a solo performance vehicle with no other instrumental accompaniment.
Turetzky has performed and recorded more than 300 pieces written by and for him. He is a composer whose music has achieved some prominence, as have his interpretations of early music and composers like Domenico Dragonetti
. Music critic Michael Steinberg
has praised his continuo playing. Turetzky has appeared as a featured soloist in the major music centers of the world and is the most widely recorded solo doublebass player with seven albums on Advance, Ars Nova, Nonesuch
, Takoma
, Desto
and Finnadar music labels.
Turetzky is a versatile musician, conversant in chamber music
, baroque music
, classical, jazz
, renaissance music
, improvisational music
and many different genres of world music
. He has also developed a special affinity for klezmer
music.
In addition to The Contemporary Contrabass, Turetzky has co-edited a book series called The New Instrumentation; seven of a planned eight volumes have been finished. Turetzky wrote an introduction to The Autobiography of Pops Foster: New Orleans Jazz Man which spoke to the early development of jazz bass playing.
Bernard Jacobson of the Chicago Daily News
described Turestzky as "a virtuoso of caliber unsurpassed by any other practitioner of his instrument today."
, Connecticut
, United States
, and grew up there. He received a masters degree in music history from the University of Hartford
. In his youth, he was drawn to classic jazz music, playing professionally in that style at his first performances. His aspiration to be a jazz player was encouraged by many of the older swing stars. Turetzky continues to play classic jazz, and appears regularly at jazz festivals.
Turetzky first recorded in 1964, featuring the work of American composers George Perle
, Edgard Varèse
, Donald Martino
, Kenneth Gabburo, Ben Johnston, and an early instrument and tape piece by Charles Whittenburg. Recording activities continued with records on labels Nonesuch
, Son Nova, Ars Antigua, and Desto
. He has worked with Charles Mingus
, and has made a series of recent recordings on the Nine Winds
label with improvisational musicians George Lewis
, Vinny Golia
, Wadada Leo Smith
, Mike Wofford
and others.
Turetzky is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego
.
His former students include bass virtuosos Mark Dresser
and Karl E. H. Seigfried
; Dresser now holds Turetzky's former UCSD faculty position, while Seigfried is working with Turetzky on the latter's autobiography.
He is married to flutist Nancy Turetzky, and they have two sons and a daughter, and live in Del Mar, California
.
He also plays the guitar
, piano
, and banjo
.
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
(contrabass) soloist, teacher, and author of The Contemporary Contrabass (1974, 1989), a book that looked at a number of new and interesting ways of playing the double bass including featuring it as a solo performance vehicle with no other instrumental accompaniment.
Turetzky has performed and recorded more than 300 pieces written by and for him. He is a composer whose music has achieved some prominence, as have his interpretations of early music and composers like Domenico Dragonetti
Domenico Dragonetti
Domenico Carlo Maria Dragonetti was an Italian double bass virtuoso and composer. He stayed for thirty years in his hometown of Venice, Italy and worked at the Opera Buffa, at the Chapel of San Marco and at the Grand Opera in Vicenza...
. Music critic Michael Steinberg
Michael Steinberg (music critic)
Michael Steinberg was an American music critic, musicologist, and writer. Born in Breslau, Germany , Steinberg left Germany as one of the Kindertransport child refugees...
has praised his continuo playing. Turetzky has appeared as a featured soloist in the major music centers of the world and is the most widely recorded solo doublebass player with seven albums on Advance, Ars Nova, Nonesuch
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...
, Takoma
Takoma Records
Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
, Desto
Desto Records
Desto Records was an American classical music record label based in New York and founded in approximately 1964. Its records were distributed by CMS Records of Mount Vernon, New York beginning in the 1970s...
and Finnadar music labels.
Turetzky is a versatile musician, conversant in chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
, baroque music
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
, classical, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, renaissance music
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
, improvisational music
Musical improvisation
Musical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians...
and many different genres of world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
. He has also developed a special affinity for klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
music.
In addition to The Contemporary Contrabass, Turetzky has co-edited a book series called The New Instrumentation; seven of a planned eight volumes have been finished. Turetzky wrote an introduction to The Autobiography of Pops Foster: New Orleans Jazz Man which spoke to the early development of jazz bass playing.
Bernard Jacobson of the Chicago Daily News
Chicago Daily News
The Chicago Daily News was an afternoon daily newspaper published between 1876 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.-History:The Daily News was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty in 1875 and began publishing early the next year...
described Turestzky as "a virtuoso of caliber unsurpassed by any other practitioner of his instrument today."
Biography
Turetzky was born in NorwichNorwich, Connecticut
Regular steamship service between New York and Boston helped Norwich to prosper as a shipping center through the early part of the 20th century. During the Civil War, Norwich once again rallied and saw the growth of its textile, armaments, and specialty item manufacturing...
, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and grew up there. He received a masters degree in music history from the University of Hartford
University of Hartford
The University of Hartford is a private, independent, nonsectarian, coeducational university located in West Hartford, Connecticut. The degree programs at the University of Hartford hold the highest levels of accreditation available in the US, including the Engineering Accreditation Commission of...
. In his youth, he was drawn to classic jazz music, playing professionally in that style at his first performances. His aspiration to be a jazz player was encouraged by many of the older swing stars. Turetzky continues to play classic jazz, and appears regularly at jazz festivals.
Turetzky first recorded in 1964, featuring the work of American composers George Perle
George Perle
George Perle was a composer and music theorist. He was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. Perle was an alumnus of DePaul University...
, Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
, Donald Martino
Donald Martino
Donald Martino was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino studied composition with Ernst Bacon, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Luigi Dallapiccola...
, Kenneth Gabburo, Ben Johnston, and an early instrument and tape piece by Charles Whittenburg. Recording activities continued with records on labels Nonesuch
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...
, Son Nova, Ars Antigua, and Desto
Desto Records
Desto Records was an American classical music record label based in New York and founded in approximately 1964. Its records were distributed by CMS Records of Mount Vernon, New York beginning in the 1970s...
. He has worked with Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
, and has made a series of recent recordings on the Nine Winds
Nine Winds
Nine Winds is an American jazz record label, founded in 1977 by Vinny Golia.Golia initially founded the label to record West Coast jazz musicians, including himself...
label with improvisational musicians George Lewis
George Lewis (trombonist)
George E. Lewis is a trombone player, composer, and scholar in the fields of jazz and experimental music. He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians since 1971, and is a pioneer of computer music.- Biography :Lewis graduated from Yale University with a...
, Vinny Golia
Vinny Golia
Vinny Golia is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist specializing in woodwind instruments. He performs in the genres of contemporary music, jazz, free jazz, and free improvisation....
, Wadada Leo Smith
Wadada Leo Smith
Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith is a trumpeter and composer working primarily in the fields of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation.-Biography:...
, Mike Wofford
Mike Wofford
Mike Wofford is a jazz pianist born February 28, 1938 in San Antonio, Texas, raised in San Diego, California.He is best known as an accompanist to and music director for singers Sarah Vaughan , Ella Fitzgerald and others...
and others.
Turetzky is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
.
His former students include bass virtuosos Mark Dresser
Mark Dresser
Mark Dresser is an American double bass player and composer.-Biography:He has performed and recorded with many of the luminaries of "new" jazz composition and improvisation. For ten years he performed with the Anthony Braxton Quartet, as well as diverse groups led by Ray Anderson, Tim Berne,...
and Karl E. H. Seigfried
Karl E. H. Seigfried
Karl E. H. Seigfried is a German-American jazz, rock, and classical bassist, guitarist, composer, bandleader, writer and educator based in Chicago....
; Dresser now holds Turetzky's former UCSD faculty position, while Seigfried is working with Turetzky on the latter's autobiography.
He is married to flutist Nancy Turetzky, and they have two sons and a daughter, and live in Del Mar, California
Del Mar, California
Del Mar is an upscale beach town in San Diego County, California. The population was 4,161 at the 2010 census, down from 4,389 at the 2000 census. The San Diego County Fair is hosted on the Del Mar Fairgrounds every summer. Del Mar is Spanish for "of the sea" or "by the sea", because it is located...
.
He also plays the guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
, and banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
.
Selected discography
- Recording (solo LP), Bertram Turetzky, "Contrabassist," in a Recital of New Music, Advance FGR-1, 1964.
- Recording (solo LP), Bertram Turetzky, The Virtuoso Double Bass, Medea Records, 1966.
- Recording, Music by Donald Erb, In No Strange Land, Nonesuch Records, 1968.
- Recording (solo LP), Bertram Turetzky, The New World of Sound, Ars Nova, 1969.
- Recording (solo LP), Bertram Turetzky, The Contemporary Contrabass, Music of John Cage, Ben Johnson, and Pauline Oliveros, Nonesuch RecordsNonesuch RecordsNonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...
, 1969-70. - Recording, Five Poems for Narrator and 8 Instruments, by Netty SimonsNetty SimonsNetty Simons was an American pianist, music editor, music educator and composer.-Biography:Netty Simons was born in New York City and studied music at Third Street Music School...
, CRI Records, 1973. - Recording, Gorge, by Phil Winsor, at Mills College, Oakland, funded by a Ford Foundation Grant, 1973.
- Recording, Dragonetti Lives, Takoma Records, 1975.
- Recording, Strings, Standard School Broadcast: Music Makers, Chevron Research Company, 1975.
- Recording, Spectra, by Feiciano, CRI, 1975.
- Recording, Witold Szalonek Symphonia Concertante, solo contrabass and orchestra, Polska Musykna, 1975.
- Recording, Found Objects II, by Arthur Custer, Serenus, 1976.
- Recording (solo LP), Music by Donald Erb, J.M Mestres-Quadreny, Will Ogden, Netty Simons, Desto DC7128, 1976.
- Recording, Tree Music (principal soloist), Logs and Logs XVI, by Paul Chihara, CRI SD 269, 1976.
- Recording (solo LP), The Contemporary Contrabass, Nonesuch, 1976.
- Recording (solo LP), New Music for Contrabass, compositions by Charles Mingus, Boguslaw Schaffer, Joseph Julian, Bertram Turetzky and Donald Erb, Finnadar SR 9105, 1976.
- Recording, Piece for Four, by Olly Wilson, CRI SD 264, 1976.
- Recording, Trio for Two, by Donald Erb, and Points-Lines-Circles, by Dorrance Stalvey, ARS NOVA AN-1008, 1976.
- Recording, Modules, by Richard Moryl, Serenus, 1976.
- Recording, Inflections I, by Robert Hall Lewis (for solo contrabass), on New Music for Virtuoso/2, New World Records, Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc., NW 254 Stereo, recorded December 4, 1977, released November 1978.
- Recording for ABC, Works by Hoffman, Turetzky, Mingus, and McCartney-Lennon, Sydney, AUSTRALIA, August 5, 1978.
- Recording for ABC, with Nancy Turetzky, recorded live, NSW Conservatorium, Sydney, AUSTRALIA, August 7, 1978.
- Recording for ABC, Concerto for Bass and Jazz Band, by Donald Hannah, Brian May, Conductor, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA, August 8, 1978.
- Recording, Playback, by Barry Cunyngham, The University of Melbourne, for Move Records, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA, August 9, 1978.
- Recording, Trio for Violin, Contrabass & Piano, by Leonid Hrabovsky, on 20th Century Ukrainian Violin Music 1987 cassette recording CYFP 2032 by Yevshan Corporation, Canada, Library of Congress Card no. 78-7509959 (first recorded in 1964, 1975 on ORION-ORS 79331), First western recording of music by Ukrainian composer Leonid Hrabovsky, recorded September 1978, released June 1979.
- Recording, Celestial Variations on Charles Ives' Serenity (1919), performed by Turetzky on 16-track tape, summer 1979. (Funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Grant), 1979.
- Recording, A Different View, Turetzky (solo contrabass). Turetzky, contrabass, LP, Folkways RecordsFolkways RecordsFolkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...
, New York City, 1982. - Recording, Turetzky Featured Soloist in Phil Winsor's Gorge, written for Turetzky, Brewster Records, 1982.
- Recording, Turetzky settings and performance of selections from Sherley Anne Williams, Some Sweet Angel Chile, Blues Economique Records, September 25, 1984.
- Recording, Turetzky settings and performance of Jerome Rothenberg's, Poland 1931 and Dada Suite, Blues Economique Records, September 25, 1984.
- CD, Intersections, Bertram Turetzky and Vinny Golia, 9 Winds Label, NWCD0129 DDD, 1990.
- CD recording of San Diego Symphony Ensemble performing Roger Reynolds' Whispers Out of Time and Transfigured Wind, New World Records, 1990.
- CD, Ricercar a' 3, by Robert Erickson for solo contrabass, for CRI Records, November 1991.
- CD recording of Stuart Saunders Smith's' Notebook on CD titled Crux, O.O. Discs, USA, 1992.
- Recording, Second Avenue Klezmer Ensemble, Traditions and Transitions Second Avenue Productions, San Diego, 1992.
- CD recording of Stuart Saunders Smith's' Notebook on CD titled Crux, O.O. Discs, USA, 1992.
- CD recording of SONOR Ensemble of the University of California, San Diego, CRI CD 652, 1993.
- CD recording Compositions and Improvisations by Bertram Turetzky, Studio 101, 9 Winds Records, 1993.
- CD recording of Turetzky's Pacific Parable, winner of San Diego Music Award, Studio 101, Orphan Records, June 24, 1993.
- CD recording, Ais by Iannis Xenakis, Neuma Records, 1994.
- CD recording, Inflections I by Robert Hall Lewis, New World Records 80541-2, 1998.
- CD recording, Logs by Paul Chihara, CRI CD 815, 1999.
- CD recording, Three Pieces for Double Bass Alone, by Donald Erb, on CD titled Suddenly It's Evening, CRI CD 857, 1999.
External links
Interviews
- Bertram Turetzky interview by Bruce Duffie