Tuesdays, 8:00-9:15 pm, beginning May 7
$120.00 advance / $130.00 after April 29
register online

Learn how to make those songs really swing! We'll dissect the rhythmic elements that propel swing music and will cover the "two-beat" feel as well as walking-bass lines and how to construct them. As you learn some swing standards, you'll also  improve your left- and right-hand technique to make that swing thing easier. This is an intermediate class and is designed for bassists who have experience playing bluegrass, blues, folk, or other styles and want to get started playing this enchanting form of music. The skills you learn will also transfer easily to blues and country as well as other jazz idioms. Open to upright or guitar-style bassists.

Bassist Chuck Ervin has recently been performing swing music with the Sylvia Herold Trio, folk music with Euphonia, classic country with the Mike Stadler & Mary Gibbons Band, jazz and pop with guitarist Chris Grampp and the Spin Cats, bluegrass with the Nell Robinson Soldier Stories Band, and occasionally Celtic folk/rock with Wake the Dead, among others.

He was the bassist in the “Woody Guthrie’s American Song,” which in 2012 enjoyed a two-week run at the Freight & Salvage and in 2011 at Marin Theater Company. He has also worked as an actor, bassist, and singer in stage productions at Center Repertory Theatre, Sierra Repertory Theatre, and Contra Costa Civic Theater.

Other area musicians he's worked with include Bobby Black, Joe Craven, Ed Johnson, Jinx Jones, Keith Little, Tony Marcus, Jim Nunally, Rick Quisol, Jeff Sanford, and Radim Zenkl. He studied jazz bass with Glenn Richman, bassist for vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, and teaches bass at music camp and at his Oakland home.