In the 1990s, bass professor Patrick Neher took a sabbatical from his University of Arizona position to study with Rabbath. “He accepted me immediately,” says Neher, “even though I’m considered sort of a skeptic by him because I question absolutely everything. “Our lessons were really focused an awful lot on philosophy,” he adds.

“We’d have a scheduled hour, but we’d play the bass an hour and then go four or five hours talking about how music integrates into life. Otherwise, we dealt with performance anxiety, how to breathe, how to use weight instead of pressure, how to make every motion efficient according to my own physique. I added new techniques to my repertoire, but not everything that he suggests. The things he can do that I can’t do are because our physiques are different. It’s important that we both realize that.”

Ellison may have had to do some fast talking to convince Rabbath to take him as a student, but today Rabbath considers teaching to be one of the most important things he can do. Says Neher, “For an article I was writing for Double Bassist magazine, I asked him, ‘Why do you teach?’ And he said, ‘I don’t want to die alone. It’s important to have a legacy that continues and that has a connection with people.’”

Rabbath, recalling the unsolicited, sincere encouragement he’d once received from a stranger named Yehudi Menhuin, says, “I hate people who are very big and feel they must impress people by being harsh on students. You must hold students, not crush them, if you are going to help them.”

Which helps you understand what Ellison means when he declares, as if talking about a spiritual guru, “François is the personification of love.”

What François Rabbath Plays
After Rabbath’s fine old Italian bass was stolen around 1970, he essentially stopped playing for a couple of years. Then one day a colleague showed him a discarded 1936 Quenoil he’d stashed in the garage.

“I hate her,” said the colleague. “I’ve lost jobs because of her.”

Rabbath tried the instrument. “She was very easy to play,” he says, “but she was screaming, without any quality. But I knew she had something to say. You make the bass. If you do not put the right vibration on the wood, with a Stradivarius or anything else, she will not respond.”

Rabbath came to terms with the instrument, and has now played it for more than 30 years.

Recently he started using bows by the Parisian maker Boris Fritsch, who won a certificate of merit for contemporary bow design at the 2004 Concours Etienne Vatelot. “It makes the hall ring, the bass also,” says Rabbath. “I still don’t know how to use it perfectly, but after two days, I phoned him and said, ‘You are a genius. Make me another.’”