College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Red Rock Rondo by Phillip Bimstein will premiere in the Morgan Theatre at Utah State University, June 15, 2006, at 7:30 pm.

Phillip Bimstein

“Phillip Bimstein uses the voices, natural sounds and culture of his adopted home in his compositions, and he practices politics with music in mind.“
- National Public Radio’s All Things Considered

Alternative classical composer 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, Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Starkland CD of Mr. 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. Mr. Bimstein’s compositions are a virtual breath of fresh air.” Starkland will release a second CD of Mr. Bimstein's compositions, Larkin Gifford's Harmonica, in mid-2005.

Mr. Bimstein was born in Chicago and is a graduate of Chicago Conservatory of Music, where he majored in theory & composition. In the 1980’s 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, Mr. 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 Deseret News.

In 1997 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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,” Mr. 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 Mr. Bimstein “The Man Who Brought Civility Back to Town.”

Mr. Bimstein has served as chair of the Utah Humanities Council, chair of the art and humanities residency center, The MESA, board member of the American Music Center, and is profiled in Who’s Who in America. He is also a frequent guest speaker on creativity, community and collaboration.

Mr. Bimstein is composing a new work under a commission from the Mountain West Songfest and funded by a grant from the Continental Harmony (link to http://www.continentalharmony.org/community_detail.cfm?oid=2257) project of the American Composers Forum. The work, tentatively titled Red Rock Rondo, will premiere at the Songfest.