Player, arranger, composer and teacher who brought the double bass to the fore as a solo instrument
The American virtuoso bassist Gary Karr, who has died aged 83 after a brain aneurysm, brought the double bass into the limelight as a solo instrument. He embraced the skills of his bass predecessors Domenico Dragonetti, Giovanni Bottesini and Serge Koussevitzky, then raised the bar to a new level through his sheer joy in playing and communication of his love for the instrument, combined with an unrivalled technical skill.
Hugo Cole in the Guardian, recalling Karr’s visit to the UK in 1978, likened him to an ostrich suddenly becoming a nightingale and remarked that his “breathtaking solo bass playing is surely one of the wonders of 20th-century musical performance”.
One of the elements of Karr’s playing that set him apart was the way he used the bow. “I’ve always considered myself a lyrical artist. My first desire was to be a singer, so I have always been determined to sing on the bass.” He drew his individual, intense sound with long slow bows, playing close to the bridge, and projecting differently from the traditional back-of-the-string-section sound familiar from his youth. He applied many of the techniques of the upper strings to the bass.
