ISB Center Stage with Uxia Martinez-Botana and Travis Harrison 

Next up on the ISB Center Stage, we proudly present Uxia Martinez Botana and Travis Harrison.

Selected by the American bass magazine No Treble as one of the world's top ten bass players, Spain’s Uxía Martínez Botana received her first professional contract with the Symphony Orchestra of Galicia (Spain) at the age of 16. She most recently served as principal bass of the Brussels Philharmonic and has been principal bass of the Weinberger Kammerorchester (Zurich) since 2016. She has also performed as principal bass with Gidon Kremer’s Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra. Beside her work in orchestras, Uxía Martínez Botana has an active international career as a soloist and as a chamber musician. In 2016 she was selected by The National Dutch Musical Instrument Foundation as one of their sponsored artists with a loan of the double bass known as “The English Lady¨ (c.1800) from the Willem Vogelaar collection. She also plays a Ludwig Neuner instrument (1854) loaned by a private sponsor. She received the Gustav Mahler scholarship by the Claudio Abbado Foundation in 2014 and was named “Artist of the Year” in 2016 by Japan’s music magazine The Walkers. Uxia’s passion for film music has led her to collaborate in many recordings of soundtracks with the Netherlands Film Festival. Uxia is professor of bass at the ESMUC College of Music of Catalonia in Barcelona and at the Barenboim-Said Academy.

Travis Harrison is a freelance orchestral and chamber musician in his hometown of Toronto, Canada after a 6-year tenure with Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He has served as a faculty member of the Manitoba Conservatory of Music and Art, Carleton University, the University of Manitoba, and Sistema Winnipeg and maintains a private studio based out of Toronto. Travis jointly published The Canadian School of Double Bass with Joel Quarrington, a first-of-its-kind eBook complete with video and audio examples. He was a founding member of the Winnipeg Chamber Players, and Nova Scotia’s Iris Ensemble and has performed at numerous festivals and on recordings across multiple musical genres. Travis is the proud owner of an old English bass attributed to Vincenzo Panormo, c.1810, and a bass he commissioned from Canadian master luthier Mario Lamarre. He makes music on these instruments with the bows of Canadian bow maker Bernard Walke. Travis has served the bass community as a board member of the International Society of Bassists since 2017.