Ariane Cap

Ariane's love for Rock, Pop, Funk and all the other loud stuff really began when she traveled to the States at age eighteen to see a bit of the world. She hung out with the musicians in Harvard Square, playing different instruments, for an adventurous twelve months and soaked up everything with a beat. When Ariane returned to Austria she joined several local bands as a keyboardist and guitar player, and eventually picked up the bass guitar. She immediately fell in love with the bass's rhythmic and melodic function, its supportive role in the band and its endless groovability components.

While Ariane was developing her feeling for the bass, she also studied Biology at Leopold Franzens Universitaet Innsbruck, but by the time she had the MS under her belt, she'd realized that watching neural networks in worms was not for her.

Ariane began to study electric and upright bass at the Munich Bass Institute and continued at the Academy of Music and Fine Arts in Vienna. Four years into her studies she was granted a full one-year scholarship for the Jazz program at the University of Miami. The year at U of M was chock full of practice and study of arranging, modal composition, improvisation, rhythmic concepts and more. When the year was up Ariane found she was not ready to return to the singing hills and moved on to the University of South Florida, where she became a Graduate Teaching Assistant and finished her Graduate Certificate degree in Music. In April of 2001, Ariane and her husband Wolfgang moved to Northern California, where the hills are surely singing, too.

Musically Ariane has worked in a wide array of genres including Rock, Pop, and Blues; from Austrian commercial music to Top 40; in Big Band, Jazz, Bebop, Latin, Musicals and more. Her musical influences are diverse -- Sting, Victor Wooten, Peter Gabriel, Toto, Norah Jones, Lawrence Laughing, Chick Corea, and the Dixie Chicks, to name a few. Ariane's true heart comes alive playing the more unusual and eclectic styles. For example, she really enjoyed playing with the 'MozARTband' in Vienna -- a group that blends Mozart's music with elements of funk and rock, and features members of both the Viennese Philharmonic and rock star Falco's band.

On her journey to improve herself and her musicianship Ariane has pursued spiritual learning and expansion of the mind through a number of venues, including NLP, Shamanism and Hypnosis. A certified NLP Trainer with her own business, see www.ppimk.com, and a Certified Hypnotherapist, she is dedicated to helping people unfold their potential for fulfilling lives. The musical and creative focus of her own life has helped her to do just that for herself and others, be it through playing music or through her seminars and coaching.

Ariane is also an enthusiastic teacher of bass and music. Having fought her way from "performance fright" to "performance freedom" she knows how to help her students express themselves musically while learning the techniques, traditions and theory of music. For information about studying with Ariane, click on the 'Teaching' tab on her personal website: www.arianemusic.net. Having studied with such musical visionairies as Victor Wooten, Steve Bailey, Gerald Veasley and others has greatly inspired her to pass on what she has learned on a musical level and beyond. She has her own teaching studio in Vallejo.

Ariane teaches at summer rock camps for Soundwall (www.rockcamp.org) and has agreed to conduct band classes for BandWorks (www.bandworks.com). In the near future, she will offer online classes via www.musicdojo.com as well. Ariane is on a quest to encourage women and girls to pick up the bass and venture into the male dominated world of rock, jazz and beyond. She is featured on www.bassgirls.com. Ariane has several of her own bands as well, and is currently working on a solo CD, which will feature both solo bass offerings and ensemble pieces. Many of Ariane's musical friends will appear on this recording, grooving along with her on celtic traditionals, world-flavored tunes and her own compositions. For more information, have a look at the 'My Bands' page on her personal website, www.arianemusic.net.

Ariane lives with her busy composer/musician husband Wolf and their cat Lucky in a house on a beautiful Vallejo hillside. They host weekly Jazz improv sessions, Artist's Way Groups and other fun and educational happenings. The two also own a busy audio editing studio, Wolf Track Audio. They are fans of The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and more in that vein, and are currently addicted to a game called "The Settlers of Catan".

Ariane has been a Tempest fan from the moment she first heard them. In Tempest she has found a band that feeds her desire for the original and the eclectic, for the whirling melodious bass parts and the pocket, for the mix of tradition with modern edginess -- all seasoned with that addictive Celtic flavor.