Bach on Double Bass in Harlem

Born into a musical family in Aleppo, Syria in 1931, double bass soloist and pedagogue François Rabbath worked in Beirut, Lebanon before emigrating to Paris in the 1950s. His musical career as a self-taught double bassist encompasses the recording studio, jazz café, opera house, and recital stage. Rabbath composed Poucha-Dass in 1968. The Indian Raga system inspired him to compose a piece in which the double bass imitates the distinctive sound of two plucked stringed instruments: the sitar, a melodic instrument with movable frets, and the tanpura, whose open strings provide a drone accompaniment in Hindu music. Throughout Poucha-Dass, the bassist plays against the normal physical aspects of handling the bow by increasing the speed of the arm and by reducing its weight, all while moving the bow close to the bridge to play sul ponticello in order to obtain the high overtones of the low fundamental notes. Poucha-Dass begins with calm, meditative music before transitioning to a driving polyrhythmic dance that intensifies inexorably until its final ascent.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific authorship of music across a variety of instruments and forms, including orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the cello suites and sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th century Bach Revival, he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.

Sarian Sankoh is a composer, musician, and educator. She graduated from New York University in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in Music Theory & Composition and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. When it comes to her art, Sarian views herself as a storyteller that utilizes music to interpolate and communicate her experiences of the world as a queer Black woman living in the US. Although she is primarily a songwriter, Sarian has arranged for steel band, written string quartets, and enjoys creating electroacoustic music. Her work for solo bass, 'everythingfeelsthesame' was premiered at MISE_EN PLACE in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on July 30th.

Tom Johnson, born in Colorado in 1939, received B.A. and M.Mus. degrees from Yale University, and studied composition privately with Morton Feldman. After 15 years in New York, he moved to Paris, where he has lived since 1983. He is considered a minimalist, since he works with simple forms, limited scales, and generally reduced materials, but he proceeds in a more logical way than most minimalists, often using formulas, permutations, predictable sequences and various mathematical models.