Musicians For Musicians (MFM) Presents: Music Is Essential ZOOM Talk Event #9 with Bassists Jerome Harris and Ron Wasserman Speaking on “Bass: The Joys of The Bottom Line”

Date: Tuesday, January 18^th, 2024
Time: 5pm to 6:30pm (ET)
Venue:  ZOOM

ZOOM Host: Adam ReifsteckOOM
Ticket: $5 for non MFM members  

• Non-members register and pay here: t.b.a.

Webinar description:

While the attention of many listeners is drawn to melodies, what happens in the lower registers can be critically important for music to sound enjoyable and fulfilling. Join bass guitarist Jerome Harris and double bassist Ron Wasserman as they bring broad perspective and diverse experience to a discussion of handling music’s foundations artfully. There’s a lot to savor and appreciate down below! 

About Jerome Harris

Jerome Harris’s first major professional performing experience came as bass guitarist with the iconic jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins in 1978.  Harris has performed on six continents, working with Jack DeJohnette, David Krakauer, Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Leni Stern, Martha Redbone, Ray Anderson, Julius Hemphill, Amina Claudine Myers, Ned Rothenberg, Oliver Lake, and many others in jazz and jazz-adjacent genres.

Jerome Harris appears on over seventy recordings.  He has taught at Hampshire College, William Paterson University, Lehman College (City University of New York), and the Alternative Guitar Summit Camp. Harris’s published essays include “Considering Jaki Byard” (in Sound American SA22; New York: Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., 2019), and “Jazz on the Global Stage” (in The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective; edited by Ingrid Monson; New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2000). He studied at Harvard College (A.B. 1973) and New England Conservatory of Music (B.M. with honors, 1977). 

About Ron Wasserman

Ron Wasserman, a fourth-generation musician and lifelong New Yorker, has an unusually diverse track record of performing, composing, commissioning, and producing music. Since his first professional gig in 1979 at age 18, Ron has logged well over 6,000 performances in almost every performing arts genre imaginable, since 1988 the majority of them as the principal bassist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra.

Ron has premiered and/or commissioned works by a large array of composers, including Miho Hazama. Rufus Reid, Courtney Bryan, Stephanie Ann Boyd, and himself. In 2017 his New York Jazzharmonic partnered with The Ashley Bouder Project when they started accompanying professional dance concert performances. Together they undertook the process of commissioning composers AND choreographers, with an emphasis on women.

His own jazz and classical music fills now four CDs with several more in the works. One, with his full 17-piece band was recorded in 2019 with a 2023 release.

During the pandemic, Ron started filming dance videos, culminating in his “Curbside Nutcracker,” which garnered a viral half-million views, and his fully produced narrative movie filmed at the Bronx Zoo: “Backstage Pass: Carnival of the Animals.”

At the New York City Ballet, Ron has also arranged, transcribed, and/or conducted works by Wayne Shorter, Stravinsky, Piazzolla, and Solange Knowles’

Backstage Pass: https://youtu.be/Oo8A5UprCI4

Curbside Nutcracker: https://youtu.be/pH0JLfSKv04

About MFM (https://www.MusiciansForMusicians.org) 

MFM seeks to bring together musicians from all disciplines, styles, traditions and localities in the cause of their mutual self-betterment. Whether through education, networking or political action, MFM’s ultimate goal is to elevate the work of all musicians to the level of a true profession.