"When
I was growing up in Burlington, Vermont,
my parents persistently tried to stop the
latent musician in me (age 3) from swearing
ad nauseam, running around naked, and urinating
in the neighbor's sandbox. For some odd
reason, my clothing of choice at that time
consisted of thigh-high leather boots,
a bath towel fashioned as a cape, and a
sweet Gene Simmons-esque silver/bloodied
facial make-up design. I used to
jump around on the coffee table singing KISS' "Detroit
Rock City" while
strumming a wooden Bjorn Borg tennis racket!
It didn't stop there. Like all junior high kids in the late 80's,
listening to Stryper and Dokken (and maybe some RATT) in 7th grade
further intensified my glam heavy metal urges. So, I went out and
bought my first bass, a Pearl White, 4-String Fretted Westone.
During high school, I held high-ranking chairs as a violist in
numerous All-District, All-State, and All-New England Festival
Orchestras. I was then recruited to play competitive soccer at Bates
College, in Lewiston, Maine (BA Music Performance), where
I was fortunate enough to study viola performance and analysis
with Julia Adams of the Portland
String Quartet. My compositional course work included "The
Analysis of Electro acoustic Composition" with Professor Simon
Waters during a semester abroad at the University
of East Anglia, School of Music, Norwich, England, in 1995.
My Senior Thesis project was entitled: "A Performance
and Analysis of Selected Works for Viola": Ernest
Bloch's Meditation, Mozart's Violin/Viola Duet: K423, Alan
Hovhaness' Chahagir for
Solo Viola, and Dvorak's String Quartet No. 6 in F Major, Opus
96 ("American"). I was asked by the faculty to perform
this quartet during the college's convocation and awarding to famed
Russian cellist Mstislav
Rostropovich, the honorary doctor of humane letters degree
in April, 1996.
After
I graduated from Bates College, I was accepted into the Master
of Music in String Performance program at the Boston Conservatory
for both viola and electric bass. But I decided to head to New
York City instead to pursue corporate opportunities in internet
business development just as things were heating up in the Dotcom
world. During my time in New York City, it was business work
by day and music club work at night! I worked full-time in senior
business development and executive production
management
capacities at Sony Corporation Of America (Sony Online Ventures
and Sony Music Worldwide Radio Networks), News Corporation (FOX
Sports Online), theglobe.com, and Opus360 Corporation (FreeAgent.com). Thankfully,
several of these companies yielded successful initial public offerings! After
leaving the corporate world, I have been musically active as a
professional bassist/violist/composer/string arranger/contractor,
and music director in Brooklyn, NY, West Chester, PA, Chicago,
IL, and Los Angeles, CA.
Jay
Terrien is a Los Angeles, California based professional
bassist, violist, string arranger, composer, contractor,
and music director. Born and raised in Burlington,
Vermont,
Terrien
received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from the
prestigious Bates
College in Lewiston, Maine. Terrien also spent
time studying viola and Electro acoustic composition
at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England.
Alongside avidly promoting and raising awareness about
his own unique composition and collaboration projects,
Terrien has a constant plateful of professional recording
session sideman work as an electric
bassist, violist, and string arranger for a
wide variety of major label-backed artists, independent bands, and Motion Picture
and Television projects that often feature some of
the world's top musicians, producers,
and engineers. For freelance string arrangement and live string ensemble
performances, Terrien also acts as the primary string contractor and transcription/copyist
which
further
ensures
that
a
live performance or string
recording
session
will
go as smoothly (and caffeinated)
as
possible.
Alongside a distinguished career as a freelance bassist, Terrien also doubles
as a work-for-hire session violist, freelancing in both orchestras and small
ensembles
for numerous major film, television, and recording label projects.
As a string arranger, Terrien recently contributed string arrangements, conducting,
and
string contracting to the new Rancid record, “Let The Dominoes Fall” (2009-
Hellcat/Epitaph Records).
His latest album, “All The Dolls In The Same
Place”, is a powerful progressive rock tinged
bass and drums duo album (mixed and produced by Ronan
Chris Murphy) that features extensive acoustic and
electronic drum contributions from King Crimson drummer
and session ace Pat Mastelotto. He also co-produced
alongside Ruiner Severhead “The
Jesus Fist Studies”, an album featuring the
music of bassist/composer Demond Wilson, of the pioneering
secular doom fusion ensemble, “JESUS FIST”.
You can
also find Jay Terrien catching up with his fellow
bass fansand gear aficionados during master classes,
at industry-trade
shows like NAMM,
and at
bass-specific online communities such as TalkBass.com and Extendedrangebassist.com,
etc.
Equipment
Specs and Endorsements (For All Of You Gearheads):
Strings: D'Addario XL's
Custom 4+5-String Sets, with Low B and High C for
altered tunings (E-C Tuning:
.120, .85, .65, .45, .32)
Status Graphite HotWire Strings Doubleball Custom Gauges for 6-String
Status Custom Fretless
(E-F Tuning: .100, .80, .60, .40, .30, .20)
Recording: Digidesign Pro Tools LE Version 7.3.1 for
Digi002 Hardware, KORG D-1600 Digital Studio, Alesis
M1 Active Mk2 Monitors, Rode NTK Tube
Condenser Mic, Rode NT5 Condenser Pair, Roland D-50 Linear Synthesizer
Computer Specs: Customized Hand-built PC With Win XP
Pro, AMD Athlon XP 2200+/266 FSB Processor CPU, Asus
VIA A7V333 Chipset ATX Motherboard
w/ RAID, 3 IBM 80GB Hard drives, Micron 512MB 64x64 PC2100 DDRAM RAM,
Promise Controller Card ULTRA133TX2.
eMachines 6811 Laptop running Pro Tools LE 7.3.1 (Digi002)
