Up & Comer
Name: Jeffrey Weisner
Age: 36
Position: Faculty member,
Peabody
Conservatory, and a double bassist in the National
Symphony Orchestra, Washington, D.C.
Stats: BMus '91, Boston University; MMus '95,
Peabody Conservatory
Scouting report: Paul Johnson, principal double
bassist for the Baltimore Opera Company and a member of the
bass faculty at Peabody, says, "Jeff's an excellent player,
and it's not every performer who wants to spend the kind of
time it takes to teach. Jeff wants to be part of what we're
doing here, and he really has his thumb on the pulse of
what's happening today in new music."
First instrument: "I played the piano from age 7 to
11 or so. Then I rebelled and quit. My mother is a music
teacher, so it's sort of the family business, and I think I
had a phase when I wanted to get away from it."
Why the double bass: "When you're the bass, you're
down in the nuts and bolts of the music. You see the
structure of how things work because you're at the root. I
love the feeling that you're driving the whole structure
along."
Lugging such a big instrument: "After a while, you
stop thinking about it because you do it all the time. Bass
plays a big role in determining what kind of car you
drive."
Great bass parts: "The composer a lot of bass
players love is Richard Strauss, who wrote very, very
difficult bass parts. But I prefer Johannes Brahms, because
when you play a Brahms bass line you see the whole
structure of the music laid out in the line. His dad was a
bass player, and clearly he knew what the instrument was
best at doing."
Mentor: Harold Robinson, who was one of his teachers
at Peabody. "He's a giant in the classical bass world. Hal
plays from the gut, and he lays out what he feels the
students need to do to be great players in a heartfelt
way."