'Songs' lyrics sum up Utah lives

Red Rock Rondo playing tunes based on oral histories

Vilo Demille came to the concert in Rockville, Washington County, on March 25. She brought her quilts with her. They were just like the quilts the bad guys had tried to steal, the quilts so lovingly described in the song, "Pretty Quilts Out on the Line."

Leon Lewis came to the concert, as well. He took to the stage at one point to recite the verses of the song Phillip Bimstein had written about him. The song features Lewis' favorite poem as well as the genealogy of Lewis' cats and horses.

And J.L. Crawford was there. And Garland and Vonda Hirschi.

On that night in March, when Red Rock Rondo first performed its new songs, there were at least a half-dozen folks in the audience who were, in fact, the subject of the songs.

Throughout this summer, there will be other opportunities to hear Red Rock Rondo. (The group will sing a couple of the songs tonight at 8 p.m. in Salt Lake City at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, as part of the annual Madeleine Festival.)

Yet I can't imagine that those other concerts will match the one we stumbled onto the weekend my husband and I decided on a getaway at Zion National Park.

It was a charming performance of a work-in-progress. And it was made all the more charming because we ended up sitting in the midst of so many of the old-timers of Springdale and Rockville.

The Rockville concert came together quite haphazardly, Bimstein explained by phone after the event. It all started when he won a grant from the American Composer's Forum. He then began interviewing the residents of the little towns around Zion National Park, condensing hours of oral history into biographical poems. Just as he started putting chords to his words, Bimstein learned that the head of the Composer's Forum, John Nuechterlein, was coming to Utah to see where the songs were set.

So Bimstein asked the Rondo musicians to gather in Springdale — oboist Charlotte Bell, singer Kate MacLeod, violinist Flavia Cervino-Wood, bassist Harold Carr and man-of-many-instruments Hal Cannon.

At first they meant to play for Nuechterlein alone, but interest was growing — and at the last minute Bimstein decided to play at the Rockville Town Hall and invite the public and ask for donations for a piano for the new community center.

In the end, Red Rock Rondo will have a premiere in Logan at the Mountain West Songfest on June 15. On June 25, the Salt Lake premiere will be at the Utah Arts Festival. The group will perform again on Aug. 5 at the Tanner Amphitheater in Springdale and on Aug. 6 at the Torrey Music Festival in Torrey.

Since Lewis is an integral part of the "When the Rooster Crows" song, Bimstein will attempt to have him onstage in June and in August. It would be wonderful if some of the others could make it to the performances as well, and maybe they could come, some of them, to the concerts in southern Utah.

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