“You get to the double bass by all kinds of detours and accidents  and disappointments,” wrote Patrick Süskind in his famous  monodrama. And if we are talking about the contemporary double  bass, one thing fundamental to twentieth- and twenty-first-century  art should be added to the recipe: wandering. This issue was  brilliantly problematised by Tom Johnson in his deceptive Failing,  and the late Stefano Scodanibbio made it the true driving force of  his own—largely improvised—output.