Program note:
Phillip Bimstein’s joyful celebration of baseball, The Bushy Wushy Rag, begins with legendary announcer Jack Buck excitedly calling an historic home run by Ozzie Smith. Bimstein recorded St. Louis Cardinal game sounds, such as cracks-of-the-bat (including Mark McGuire’s and Sammy Sosa’s, as they ended the 1999 season dueling for the home run crown), balls slamming into mitts and grunts of the home-plate umpire, shaping them into a percussion track. He also uses the voice of a lovable veteran beer vendor who calls himself Bushy Wushy and is one of baseball’s greatest fans. Bimstein composed a score for wind quintet which supports the patterns and pitch of Bushy Wushy’s voice, while also echoing Scott Joplin’s ragtime and “The St. Louis Blues,” music which arose at the same time as baseball became popular in America.
The Bushy Wushy Rag was commissioned by Continental Harmony, a partnership of American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Associate Partner of the White House Millennium Council. Originally composed for wind quintet, The Bushy Wushy Rag was premiered by Equinox Chamber Players in St. Louis in 2000 and featured in a PBS special in 2001. For the Avian Orchestra performance, the oboe, bassoon and horn parts have been transferred to violin, cello and tenor sax, while the flute and clarinet parts remain the same.
The Bushy Wushy Rag is available now as a CD single by the Equinox Chamber Players, and will be included on Starkland Record’s second release of Phillip Bimstein’s music, Larkin Gifford’s Harmonica, in mid-2004.
About the composer:
Alternative classical composer and former MTV rocker Phillip Bimstein lives in Springdale, Utah, where he also served two terms as mayor. A recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer and Austria’s Prix Ars Electronica, Bimstein’s music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Bang on a Can Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and London’s Royal Opera House.
Ensembles who have performed Bimstein’s works include Relâche, Turtle Island String Quartet, Modern Mandolin Quartet, Present Music, Abramyan String Quartet, Sierra Winds, Equinox Chamber Players, the California E.A.R. Unit, and Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues. A CD of Bimstein’s music, Garland Hirschi’s Cows, garnered rave reviews internationally in such publications as Stereo Review, Wired, Fanfare, Stereophile, and this from Schwann Opus: “A highly entertaining, populist-oriented collection of serious modern music. Bimstein’s compositions are a virtual breath of fresh air.” Starkland Records will release a second CD of Bimstein’s compositions, Larkin Gifford’s Harmonica, in mid-2004.
Bimstein was born in Chicago and is a graduate of Chicago Conservatory of Music, where he majored in theory & composition. In the 1980s he led the new wave band Phil ‘n’ the Blanks, whose three albums and six videos were college radio and MTV hits. After further studies at UCLA in composition, orchestration and conducting, Bimstein took a hiking trip to southern Utah and never left.
Fascinated by language and the ability of music to tell a story, he frequently incorporates text in his work. Refuge, his string quartet based on the book by Utah naturalist Terry Tempest Williams, was described as “sublime-elegant perfection” by the Desert News.
In 1997 Bimstein was awarded Meet The Composer’s largest grant, the three-year New Residencies, during which he composed music that celebrates and explores the intimate relationship between the landscapes of the desert southwest and the many cultures that have inhabited the area.
In 2000 Bimstein received a Continental Harmony grant from the American Composers Forum, the National Endowment for the Arts and the White House Millennium Council to write The Bushy Wushy Rag, a work celebrating baseball and the city of St. Louis. It was featured in a nationally broadcast PBS special in October 2001.
Currently Bimstein is performing and writing for the chamber folk quartet blue haiku, whose CD, heat beneath the sand, was called “fascinating, fresh and engrossing” by Sing Out! Magazine.
Described by Outside Magazine as “America’s only all-natural politician-composer,” Bimstein served two terms as Springdale mayor. As mayor he was an outspoken advocate for protection of the environment and he has testified twice before Congress in support of Utah’s wilderness. Due to his successful efforts to bring harmony to his previously divided community, Parade Magazine dubbed Bimstein, “The Man Who Brought Civililty Back to Town.”
Bimstein also serves as Chair of the Utah Humanities Council and Vice-President of the American Music Center, and is profiled in Who’s Who in America.
