JazzINK Interview: On Bass With Marco Panascia
© 2006, Andrea Canter

“A great contrabassist who is just as formidable on the electric bass” --Lenny White

Until young piano sensation Eldar came to town last fall, I had never heard of bassist Marco Panascia. I suspect that this oversight is not limited to me or other Midwestern jazz enthusiasts. Few bassists get their due regardless of their talents. For each of the occasional Dave Hollands or Christian McBrides, there’s a list of Marco Panascias making great music every day in support of the genre’s headliners. And better than anyone else, they understand why the bass is generally so undervalued and misunderstood by the average jazz listener, and why its role is so vital to our enjoyment of the music.

Italian native Marco Panascia came to the United States in 1999 after winning first prize in the International Jazz Double Bass Competition in Edinburgh, Scotland. He graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and went on for a master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music; he also attended the Henry Mancini Institute at the UCLA. Panascia’s resume includes performances with Herbie Hancock, Joe Lovano, Bobby McFerrin, Dave Liebman, Gary Burton, Roy Hargrove, Benny Green, Peter Erskine, Dianne Reeves, Shirley Horn, Chris Botti, Dave Koz, Vincent Herring, and Jeremy Pelt, in addition to his current tour with young Eldar and drummer Todd Strait.  Recently Marco recorded a live CD on Sony BMG with Eldar at the Blue Note, featuring special guests Roy Hargrove and Chris Botti, scheduled for a June 2006 release.

I spoke with Marco at the Dakota in Minneapolis following the first set with Eldar, and completed this interview via e-mail during breaks in his winter tour.

JI. When and why did you decide to play the bass?
MP. I played the piano for 6 years as a kid (ages 8-14). When I was 16, I heard of a rock band being formed in my high school. A classmate was selling an electric bass for $25, so I decided to buy it and audition for the bass spot in that band. I got in, and spent the next three years playing classic rock, heavy metal and the like. When I was 19, I discovered Jaco Pastorius, and he was the bridge between rock and jazz for me (I had despised jazz before then). Getting more and more into jazz, doubling on the acoustic bass felt like the natural choice for me, so I picked up a cheap plywood upright, and enrolled at the local conservatory.

JI. Who (or what) were your most important jazz influences?
MP. As I mentioned before, Jaco sparked my interest in jazz. I had been thinking of picking up the upright bass for a few months, but I finally got to doing so after hearing the John Patitucci Trio perform live in my hometown of Catania, Italy, with Peter Erskine and Joey Calderazzo. I still remember the date vividly--it was January 30th, 1992. The following morning, I went out and bought my first upright bass. Over the years, my most important influences have been Ray Brown, Ron Carter, Christian McBride, Robert Hurst, Dave Holland, Buster Williams, and a bassist from Italy named Dario Deidda. Not many people have ever heard of him, but in my opinion, he's the world's greatest jazz bassist. Do not hesitate to google him up!

JI. Tell me about your music education-- where did you study? Do you play other instruments?
MP. Back home in Italy, I studied classical bass at the local conservatory for about five years. After moving to the U.S. in 1999, I got my bachelor's at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and my master's at Manhattan School of Music in NYC. But I will say that my main education as a jazz bassist has happened right on the bandstand. I believe that I must have learned something new on each one of the thousands of gigs I have played so far. I started my musical education as a pianist, and I believe that this has helped my harmonic conception on the bass tremendously. I still keep on using keyboard instruments to compose my music and create sequences and demos. I must say that I love my Wurlitzer and Rhodes electric pianos as much as my basses, even though you won't hear me playing them live on gigs, I would feel too embarrassed!

JI. The bass seems to be the most underappreciated of the common instruments in jazz ensembles. Sometimes it seems the audience stops listening during the bass solo.  What advice would you give to a listener to help him or her listen "more intelligently" to the bassist? In other words, what is the bassist doing and how can an average listener "hear" it?
MP.All too often, during a jazz live performance, bass solos haven't historically been given the attention they deserve, for several reasons. One of them might have to do with the lower pitched sounds produced by the bass, which are harder to hear when compared to higher pitched sounds produced by a trumpet or a piano, for instance. Another reason might have to do with the lower overall dynamic level that the band has to use during a bass solo, so that the lower pitched notes coming out of the bass might be heard more easily. However, thanks to the technological advances achieved over the past 40 years, bass players nowadays have some tools at their disposal that can allow them to make themselves as heard (and appreciated) as any high pitched lead instrument. These advances include bass amplifiers and steel strings, which respectively allow for a louder sound on the bandstand and an added facility in all the registers available on the bass.

Now that the bass can actually be heard loudly and clearly during a solo and when it accompanies a lead instrument, the audience has a better opportunity to finally relate to the several brilliant possibilities offered by such a wonderful and often misunderstood instrument. The first thing I would recommend the novice jazz concertgoer to listen for is the dual nature of the bass: the harmony reinforcer, along with the piano, and the timekeeper, along with the drum set. These two basic functions feed off of each other all the time when the bass accompanies a lead instrument. And when the bass gets to solo, a third additional function becomes prominent: the bass can become as refined a solo instrument as a saxophone or a guitar, aided by the added facility that modern steel strings and amplification offer to any player.

One more thing that is worth noticing is that bass players never get to rest or lay out during a live performance. They are either accompanying or soloing at any given time. Unlike a lead horn player, they never get to rest at the end of their solos. They must keep on playing and accompany the next soloist. That is why I am a strong advocate of paying bass players more than any other instrumentalists at the end of a gig: they work harder than everyone else on the bandstand!

More information about the bass in jazz can be found on JazzINK at [ insert link to article in Jazz Basics]. Learn more about the remarkable bassist, Marco Panascia, at www.marcopanascia.com