FIRST BASS

posted by James Reel

    When bassist François Rabbath was in Tucson a few months ago, I snagged him for a profile that now appears in Strings magazine:

    “It’s a dream to write music for him because there’s virtually nothing he can’t do,” says composer and bassist Frank Proto.
    “He has a Middle Eastern approach to Western music, which I find refreshing,” says University of Arizona bass professor Patrick Neher. “It’s very emotional. He can really jerk your tears like no one. He approaches all music that way. He loves every note, and he projects that love into what he does.”
    They’re talking about François Rabbath, the closest thing to a true guru the double-bass world has yet produced. Musicians make pilgrimages to his home in Paris or invite him to workshops in North America to learn the unorthodox practices that allow Rabbath to be a player of deep expression and astonishing technique, even at age 75.
    Rabbath understands the appeal of his life story—the self-taught bassist from Beirut traveled to France, decided he had little to learn from the Paris Conservatory, and became a sideman for the likes of Charles Aznavour, then a member of the Paris Opera Orchestra, a composer of genre-melding music, and a performer who can master the most difficult new scores in days. He’ll happily settle back and recount all this, but before long it’s clear that he’d rather talk about music itself, and the people who play it.