Last Contrabass in Las Vegas

Despite his connections to several prominent figures in music, Eugene Kurtz (1923-2006) is not a recognizable name among American composers. His teachers included members of the influential Parisian coterie called Les Six (Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud), and one of his own students is John Hilliard, longtime professor at James Madison University and a composer-in-residence at Staunton Music Festival on many occasions. Kurtz lived most of his life in Paris, but he continued to interact with trends in American contemporary music through recurring invited teaching posts in the U.S. Tonight we hear his most famous work, The Last Contrabass in Las Vegas, which, as one might expect from the curious title, ventures beyond pure music into a bit of comic theater.
Written in 1974 for bassist Bertram Turetsky, the work is scored for two performers: female voice and double bass, also called the contrabass. We usually envision the contrabass in a supporting role, situated at the bottom of the orchestral texture or possibly anchoring the rhythm section of a jazz or bluegrass band. Yet at various points in history, the unwieldy contrabass has had its moment in the spotlight. One can find contrabass soloists as far back as the mid 18th century, at a time when the instrument (the largest and deepest of the string family) was called a violone. In the modern era it was Serge Koussevitsky, with his stature as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who helped further develop the solo and concerto repertoire of his own chosen instrument.

In The Last Contrabass, Kurtz sets out to catalog all manner of the bass’s expressive devices—and you may be surprised to hear all that it can do. He begins with an agitated motif punctuated by glissandi and percussive strikes on the body of the instrument. All of these pings and pops and slides would be only mildly interesting were it not for the added commentary provided by the female voice. Or better put, what begins to draw our attention is what the contrabass is doing to the woman on stage. Modesty suggests this is better experienced that described in words. Suffice it to say that “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

(c) Jason Stell