Pete Walsh, Principal Bass

Pete Walsh, Principal Bass

Pete Walsh is an active freelance double bass player based in Boston, MA. Pete is particularly passionate about small ensemble playing is currently Principal Bass with Phoenix, Principal Guest Artist with Juventas New Music Ensemble, double bass continuo with Marsh Chapel Collegium and Emmanuel Music, and has performed as a guest artist with the Walden Chamber Players, Fine Arts Quartet, Harvard Musical Association, Unitas Ensemble, Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra and many others.

Equally at home as an orchestral musician he has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Boston Lyric Opera, Odyssey Opera, and is a member of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Cape Cod Symphony, where he also plays electric bass. He has performed in many top venues around the world including Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Hall, Philharmonie Berlin, and the National Centre for Performing Arts in Beijing. 

Since 2018 Pete has been a summer musician at Yellow Barn, a 5-week intensive international chamber music festival where he has performed alongside musicians from prominent chamber ensembles. Pete has also been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, National Orchestral Institute, and Round Top Music Festival. He has performed under conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Manfred Honeck, Stéphane Denève, Fabio Luisi, and Christoph Eschenbach. Contemporary composers he has worked with include Thomas Adès, Osvlado Golijov, John Harbison, Brett Dean, Steven Mackey, and many others. 

Originally from Dallas, Texas, Pete was initially drawn to the bass by listening to great jazz bass players. He began playing electric bass at age 10 and shortly after joined his middle school orchestra program on double bass. Institutions such as the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra and Texas Public School’s Regional and State Orchestras fostered a love for classical music. He also spent formative summers at the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp and Boston University Tanglewood Institute. While in Dallas he studied with Clifford Spohr of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Jeff Bradetich of the University of North Texas. 

He received both his B.M. and M.M. at Boston University studying with Edwin Barker and Benjamin Levy of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Pete performs on a double bass made in southern Germany around 1870 with a distinctive carved lion head scroll and a French bow by Polish-Canadian bow maker Zdzislaw Prochownik.