STUART HAMM AND ARIANE CAP

Every now and then, we get a couple of great bass players together to do our hard work and interview each other about their lives at the low end. This month, the great Stuart Hammbreaks bread with the equally great Ariane Cap,both state-of-the-art educators and practitioners of solo bass

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Alison Hasbach @TrueFire

STUART HAMM Ari, you’re my closest musical neighbor in Los Angeles. I’ve really valued your friendship over the years. We go hiking, we go for coffee, I take Logic lessons with your lovely husband. It’s great.

ARIANE CAP Remember how we first met? My husband and I were at a branch of Whole Foods in Los Angeles, and all of a sudden, my husband says, ‘You know that bass player you were talking about? I think that’s him over there’.

SH Later, we met at a Warwick Bass Camp in Germany, and you told me that you’d seen me at Whole Foods, and we figured out that we lived five miles apart in LA.

AC Right! After that you sent me a text saying you were going on a solo tour, and asked me if I would be interested in opening for you. I was like, ‘Wow’! To be addressed like that by Stu Hamm...

SH Oh, that’s very kind of you. Now, you’re always taking very good care of yourself. Are you still being super-healthy?

AC I definitely try to be. It’s really important to my wellbeing to be as healthy as possible, because if I don’t look after my body and eat right and sleep, I find that I just don’t function very well. I’m extremely active every day with writing books and teaching and so on, so working out keeps me sane. Right now I’m doing this crazy workout twice a week that is very heavy. I find that it really forces you to be in the moment.

SH I tried lifting weights once, but man, those things are heavy! But seriously, I’m just glad that my kid has grown up fit and athletic and slender. She inherited her mother’s genes. Anyway, what have you been working on over the past year?

AC I’ve been incredibly busy over the pandemic. I’ve helped a lot of other teachers get online. I’ve done a ton of online teaching seminars, and I finished my second book. Now I’m deeply involved in the Indiegogo campaign with that. I’ve created new teaching formats, practice groups, you know, all sorts of different things. So that’s been going really well. What about you?