George Vance Legacy is a new group that is an out reach of kcbass, Johnny Hamil, Martha Vance, Francois Rabbath, and many of kcbass family. George was adamant that Johnny start the kcbassworkshop before he passed away and we wouldn’t have kcbass or Johnny Hamil the young bass teacher without George. This group will help make his life’s work and memory help reach more kids on the international bass family just the way kcbass reached 17 years of kids in Kansas City Metro. Please let us know if you’d like to join our group via hamiljohnny@gmail.com.
It’s also a great place for those that met at George’s workshops in Washington D.C. The website Georgevancelegacy.com is looking for many of you who were apart of the workshops and/or studied directly with George. Please send us your stories of your time there, how it affected your life, and what you are doing now. If you have pictures, video or anything else related to the workshop we’d love to share that on the website for others to read. This will help pass along the legacy of George and inspire and teach the next generation of students. We all know that George taught us that we learned from Francois and other great faculty but, also from the young students. We are all apart of a great bass family so we hope this venture helps us stay connected as well as connect the next generations.
We are starting a project to make videos of the George Vance repertoire books. The audio recording is one of the best that come along with the books. However, the medium of the recording is outdated. Many young students don’t download things and use Youtube to play along with the songs. So the GVL main project is to raise money to have Francois Rabbath, Ted Botsford, and Nina DeCesare record the books in video format to share with the next generation. The amount we are trying to raise is $20,000 to pay for the cost of these videos. We are currently at $11,250 of this amount. Please consider a donation to the group.
It is rare in music pedagogy that something truly revolutionary comes along. Progressive Repertoire is the first English language method for beginning Double Bass to incorporate the innovative division of the Bass fingerboard into six positions, developed by renowned French bassist François Rabbath in his three volume Nouvelle Technique de la Contrebasse. Mr. Vance has created a method that introduces these revolutionary ideas in a progressive manner using familiar folk and classical material to produce studies and pieces that will appeal to novice Basses of all ages. In addition, a Compact Disc or MP3 download is included with each of the primary books containing all the music performed by François Rabbath, with Elizabeth Azcona-Hartmark, piano.Progressive Repertoire for Double Bass will introduce American teachers and students to the most important techniques developed for the instrument.
Johnny wrote some thoughts about George’s teaching to him. It has a lot of what George was working toward. Something that we see very present in the KCBASS workshops. Generations have now benefited from George’s work.
This Interview was transcribed by Johnny Hamil and Christian Chesanek and published in ISB magazine. It is an important document to anyone wanting to understand George’s overall philosophy and insight into his reasons to construct the progressive Repertoire sequence with Annette Costanzi.
Podcasts to listen to more about George by Johnny Hamil and many of the people who his teachings continue on with.
George Vance and His Influence
