Phillip Bimsteins Refreshing Imagination
By Stephen Smoliar
The Rehearsal Studio
Saturday, August 18, 2018
The title of the third of the four new digital-only albums recently released by Other Minds Records in its Modern Hits series is Angels, Cats & Shackles. Each of these plural nouns refers to one of the compositions by Phillip Bimstein on the album, although not in that “order of appearance.” Like most of the composers that have been associated with Other Minds over the course of that organization’s history, Bimstein is highly imaginative. However, where many composers venture into experimental territory with intense seriousness, Bimstein is one of those composers whose music, even when it is serious, seems to be consistently tinged with signs of what John Cage called a “sunny disposition.”
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