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CHICAGO — The Chicago Symphony Orchestra announces that Joseph Guastafeste, the principal bassist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 49 years, retires from the Orchestra today. An onstage retirement ceremony is planned for later this season.

Joseph Guastafeste was appointed to the position of principal bass in 1961 by Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Fritz Reiner.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Guastafeste began his musical studies at a young age on mandolin with the neighborhood Scambini sisters. After two years, he first switched to violin and then later to bass. His older brother Eddie arranged an audition for him with Fred Zimmerman of the New York Philharmonic and the Juilliard School. Guastafeste was admitted to Juilliard on scholarship and secured his first orchestral position in the New Orleans Symphony at the age of 19. He moved on to the Dallas Symphony as principal under Walter Hendl and Paul Kletzki.

Guastafeste has performed in the Chautauqua Festival Orchestra (N.Y.) and at the Casals Festival (Puerto Rico), and he also has played chamber music with the New York Wind Quintet; the Fine Arts, Vermeer, Emerson, and Juilliard quartets; and with many other groups. In the 1998/99 season he was soloist with the Chicago Symphony in a CSO-commissioned concerto written for him by Elias Tanenbaum. He also has performed with the Joffrey Ballet in a piece choreographed by Gerald Arpino entitled Valentine, a work for a male and a female dancer and solo bass, with music by Jacob Druckman

Proud of his rare instruments, Joseph Guastafeste plays a Dominico Buzon bass (ca. 1749) for all orchestral works, a Gasparo da Salo (1585) for baroque works, a Paul Claudot for contemporary pieces, and a “mini” Gagliano bass (with an added fifth string and tuned up an octave) mainly to enjoy playing Bach’s cello suites. His artistic brainchild “Basshenge,” in Birchdale, Minn., is a grouping of larger-than-life metal sculptures of basses in the style of Stonehenge.