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Worcester’s young Max Zeugner is hot jazz bass player
June 2004 – Max Zeugner. Remember his name. You’ll be hearing it soon – and often. He’s already made a place for himself in the music world; he is one of the few up-and-coming bass players. I don’t mean the plastic machine that any Internet tab-reading hack can plug into a wall and rattle mom’s fine china off the shelves with, but a real double bass. At more than six-foot tall and 50-plus pounds upright, it is the largest member of the violin family. Max has two such basses, a 150-year-old French one for playing classical music and a 50-year old slap bass for his jazz.
Max didn’t start out to become a bassist, but began lessons with local classical guitarist Kathleen Corcoran when he was young. She soon noticed that he “tended to favor the lower end of the instrument” and suggested that he try a bass. He soon hooked up with Worcester jazz bassist Joe D’Angelo and began working on an electric bass. Not long after, Rich Ardizzone at the Joy of Music Program (JOMP) along with others at Burncoat High cajoled him to try a double bass. He took to it immediately, and has been playing one ever since.
Upon graduation, Max was accepted at New York’s Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and the New England Conservatory of Music. He decided to study at the prestigious Juilliard, but the culture shock was a bit much for him. Aside from having to lug his monster bass everywhere on the NYC subway, he says that the Juilliard students treated “music as war” and that the fierce competition was not to his liking. Now 20 and about to become a senior music major at Boston University, he’s found his mentor, Ed Barker, who is also the principal bassist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The two spend hours working one-on-one, continuing to develop Max’s knowledge and capabilities in the field of classical music.
Learning to play jazz is very different. It hasn’t been around for hundreds of years. Instruction has yet to be codified — if ever, and there are no real rules. The way you learn to play jazz is to play jazz. Watch and listen to others who play. Listen to CDs, go to clubs and concerts, and, if you’re lucky, jam with other like-minded souls. One of Max’s favorite jazz bassists is Worcester’s own Thompson Kneeland, who plays with Jerry Sabatini and the Sonic Explorers. He’s off in the Big Apple right now trying out the scene, but Max admires him because “he’s a musician first and a bass player second.”
Max occasionally plays with members of the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music outside Keene, New Hampshire. They’ve been recording some new compositions that might soon be out on a CD. He jams with friends as often as he can, but he mostly does the hardest work alone, playing solo bass – spending hours just letting the music flow: no charts, no scores, just him and his upright. He doesn’t differentiate jazz from classical, to him “music is music” and he fits them both well.
He plans to finish next year at BU with a Bachelor of Music in Double Bass Performance. And from there on, it’s anybody’s guess. Maybe grad school so that he could teach, some studio work, chamber groups, or just see what’s out there. He has no immediate desire to settle into the back row of some obscure orchestra. He wants to travel and play his bass. He says he’d like to “find some people I love to play with and then go someplace where there’s no music – and play music.”
Max is well suited to his instrument. He is tall and well built with large wrists and forearms, which is important because the toughest thing about playing a double bass is being able to put your arms around its body and hold it upright. Max has a positive attitude about his chosen field. He says that music is about humanity and community, things he is grateful to JOMP for having taught him. He has very supportive parents as well. As a young player with great promise, Max had a few words of advice for other aspiring musicians: don’t let anyone give you the “fear speech,” and tell you it’s too hard to make a career in music. Max said it best: “If you love music, you’ll find your own way.”
