Bertram Turetzky

Few musical instruments have as good a buddy as the contrabass has in Bertram Turetzky, who once introduced himself to an extremely youthful audience at the Los Angeles Children's Museum as "the nicest man named Turetzky you'll ever meet." The way bassists recount the history of this artist, and this is the stuff of fact, not legend: prior to Turetzky there was really no such thing as a repertoire for the contrabass soloist; all players had at their disposal were some adaptations of cello scores and so forth. A virtuoso player whose background also includes a heavy dose of swing jazz, Turetzky systematically went about getting a large body of works commissioned for himself to play, thereby creating the contrabass repertoire as it exists today. More than 300 compositions have been written for, performed by, and recorded by Turetzky, and there are very few performing artists who could make such a claim. He has spent a great deal of his time as an academic, despite this large amount of performance activity. He received his master's degree in music history from the University of Hartford and has held the position of senior professor of music at the University of California at San Diego for decades. He has distinguished himself as a clinician and pedagogue for more than 30 years, giving numerous master classes, seminars, and workshops nationally and internationally. He has also been featured as a contrabass soloist throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Australia. He has conducted a great deal of acclaimed research in the fields of jazz history and the chamber music of the 1700s, and is the author of many reviews, articles, and the book The Contemporary Contrabass, which is what one would find in the drawer opposite all motel room beds if bassists ran the world. The enthusiastic reception for this volume led to Turetzky's appointment as co-editor of The New Instrumentation Series for UC Press. Not surprisingly, he is also a published composer, editor, transcriber, and arranger of music for the contrabass. He has received a number of awards for composition from ASCAP, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and commissions.

Read More