ST-205
Phillip Bimstein: Garland Hirschi's Cows
Stereophile:
"
½
Outstanding
in his field... [Bimstein] has used digital sampling technology to tell wry
and moving stories, and to elevate the mundane to the level of high art...
brilliantly original... Here is a talent to watch."
Alternative Press:
"
Memorable and entertaining."
Wired:
"Quirky and thoroughly engaging."
Offering
five "alternative classical" works,
this premiere Phillip Bimstein CD has been called "the ear-opening
CD of 1997" in Stereophile.
The delightful Garland Hirschi's Cows describes a Utah farmer,
his cows, and why they moo. Radio airplay of the work has generated hundreds
of calls (especially after being heard on NPR's All
Things Considered).
Listen
to Phillip Bimstein discuss his music on NPR's All Things Considered.
Dark Winds Rising, for string quartet and tape, presents the Kaibab
Paiute tribe's successful fight against the installation of a toxic waste
incinerator on their native land. Employing a technique he calls "voice organics," Bimstein
uses sampled speech to develop rhythmic patterns, melodies, and sound effects
such as mesa winds, industrial ratchets, a snake pit, and bird calls.
In The Door, Bimstein uses samples of his creaking studio door
to create some funky brass instruments, a pulsating rhythm section, fragments
of a merry-go-round's music, and a mournful seal.
The Louie Louie Variations is a contemplative fantasy that deconstructs
a classic rock chord progression, while the haunting Vox=Dominum, the most
mysterious piece on the CD, deconstructs a variety of Persian sounds.
Bimstein resides in Springdale, Utah, where he served two terms as mayor,
prompting Outside magazine to call him "America's only all-natural politician composer." His "alternative
classical" music combines acoustic instruments with found sounds and voices
to paint portraits and tell stories. Bimstein's music has been performed at Lincoln
Center, Bang on a Can, and London's Royal Opera House. In addition to his studies
of theory, composition, and orchestration at the Chicago Conservatory and UCLA,
Bimstein led the new wave band Phil 'n' the Blanks, whose albums and videos were
college radio and MTV hits.
Read
an interview with Phillip Bimstein at the American Music Center's newmusicbox.
Bimstein's latest Starkland CD is Larkin Gifford's
Harmonica, which has been
praised in such distinguished publications as The New York
Times and Stereophile.
Garland Hirschi's Cows
The Louie Louie Variations
The Modern Mandolin
Quartet
Dark Winds Rising
The Turtle Island
String Quartet
The Door
Vox=Dominum
Introduction: John Schaefer