“As the principal bass of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Joel Quarrington is always looking for a musical challenge,” writes Peter Robb in Saturday’s (11/12) Ottawa Citizen (Canada). “That explains how he came to have a 15-minute piece of new Canadian music written with him in mind…. The Polish-Canadian composer [Peter Paul Koprowski is writing] three pieces of music for the NAC Orchestra as part of winning the prestigious $75,000 NAC Award…. The Ottawa audience will get to hear the result of Quarrington’s gambit in a concert on Wednesday that will feature NACO performing Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and Koprowski’s Concertante for Double Bass, Strings and Percussion…. These days [Quarrington also] plays in a jazz duo with Toronto jazzman Dave Young.” Says Quarrington, “I’m always trying to encourage composers to feature the double bass. And if it doesn’t feature the bass, I want them to write better bass parts—things that are more challenging…. The bass is really far ahead in [jazz and rock music]. In the classical thing, we have really to catch up.”
Posted November 15, 2016
