Bassist
Alan-Arthur Aurelia the bassist.
Alan-Arthur’s story of music is about a determined late-bloomer. With a professional musician for a father, he decided to focus on other professions like becoming a classroom teacher or entering the corporate world as an adult. After almost a year of pestering from a group of friends who were trying to form a band and needed a bassist, he caved and decided to pick up the instrument at the age of 16.
After he told his father, his father immediately enrolled him in music lessons at City Music School in Manhattan where he studied with John Blaylock. His father immediately began to bootcamp his son on playing music. Mostly when Alan-Arthur would come home with a new rock riff learned and under his belt, he would present it to his father who would reply “Very good, now play it in all twelve keys”. That form of intensity drove Alan-Arthur who, when his father did a similar approach when he was taking piano lessons in first grade, decided to give up on music altogether.
He attended his first band practice and was immediately kicked out after asking “What key are we in?”. A lonely summer ahead, after being shunned his group of friends, he kept on practicing and getting better at the Electric Bass. The first bass he worked with was a loaner from City Music School and was a Univox with filed down frets and shaped like Paul McCartney’s violin bass.
As a gift for graduating high school, his mother purchased him his first electric bass. A Mexican Fender Fretless Jazz Bass. This instrument would serve Alan-Arthur extremely well in many settings and even was his instrument of choice when performing at Carnegie Hall in 2019.
When Alan-Arthur turned 18, he got his first Double Bass from his father. A plywood instrument purchased from a factory in China for only $500, the instrument fought Alan-Arthur throughout his college years. Despite being taken to multiple luthiers in NYC, the instrument just wasn’t the best. It could play Jazz somewhat nicely, but Alan-Arthur was more interested in pursuing Classical and Opera music and the fingerboard was simply flat and not properly curved, which made bowing extremely difficult.
When Alan-Arthur graduated from The College of Staten Island in 2011, his father was able to afford a proper bass for his son. Alan-Arthur had been studying with NYC bassist Gregg August for four years who connected him with bass seller, luthier and Double Bassist John Beal who sold him a more proper instrument.
Alan-Arthur continued to study with Gregg August after graduation while he volunteered his time to catch up on years missed by performing in the Hunter College Symphony, New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra and Drs. Orchestral Society of New York. He then began performing with his father’s organizations Richmond County Orchestra and Riverside Opera Company in 2012.
During the 2010s, he worked with other teachers that included Bradley Lovelace & Taylor Bergren-Chrisman. In 2017, he began studying with NY Philharmonic Double Bassist David Grossman and worked with him perfecting his skills until 2019.
Alan-Arthur has created an impressive discography of published music in Rock through his band Not From Concentrate, Classical through Richmond County Orchestra & Opera through Riverside Opera Company. All published recordings feature Alan-Arthur sitting principal chair in these performing groups.
