USC Symphony soloist lives in Columbia but he’s performed around the globe

Phillip Bush, who will perform with the USC Symphony Orchestra Oct. 18, is considered a musician’s musician.

"He's such a monster player, but wears it so lightly," said Ken May, a musician and director of the S.C. Arts Commission. "He just comes across as a real normal guy, but with amazing chops and an amazing resume."

Bush and his wife Lynn Kompass, an associate professor at the USC School of Music, and their son Spencer live in the Old Shandon neighborhood of Columbia. He will perform Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 at the Oct. 18 USC Symphony concert.

The pianist spent his early years in New Jersey where his father worked for a book publisher and played jazz and his mother, a native of Germany, usually had Mozart and Schumann on the record player. Young Phillip listened and memorized and started music classes at 5. In 1967, the family moved to Charlotte.

When he was 10, Bush heard a concert that would lead to his love of 20^th century music. The New York Philharmonic came to town and played Bela Bartok's 1936 "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste." That sent him scurrying for more music by Bartok and other early 20th-century composers.

After high school he headed to the Peabody Institute Conservatory where he studied with Leon Fleisher, an acclaimed pianist. He didn't consider himself a standout student and was reluctant to take on and fully appreciate the older music. Warming up to the older composers took time. Bach and Beethoven, especially the dark edginess of the latter, weren't too difficult. Early classical composers -- Mozart and Haydn -- were another matter.

"It took me a while to see the sense of invention in the works, and now they're some of my favorites," he said.

Upon graduating Peabody, Bush headed to the Banff Centre in Canada for post-graduate studies. In the nonstructured environment, Bush developed his discipline. That's also where he met composer Steve Reich, who was a visiting artist.

"I cajoled the school into letting me set up a performance of Reich's 'Six Pianos' since we had plenty of pianos there," Bush said. Reich came and heard it, and Bush followed him around all week "like a groupie." After Banff, he moved to New York, where Reich hired him as a rehearsal player. A few years later, he was part of the group. He also worked with dancer/choreographer/composer Laura Dean and through her met other new music composers and performers, including Philip Glass. He performed with both the Reich and Glass ensembles for most of the next 20 years.

During his years in New York, Bush frequently performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Bargemusic. He has played at festivals from Cape Cod to Scotland and for eight years was in the piano group Typhoon, which topped the classical music charts in Japan for several years. During the mid-1990s, he started performing with Present Music, based in Milwaukee, and in 2000 began teaching at the University of Michigan School of Music. At Michigan, he met Kompass, who was finishing her doctorate. She got a job at the USC School of Music and Bush settled here shortly after the two married about four years ago.

"This is a pleasant city to live in, and I've gotten to know a lot of people in the creative community," he said.

He’s been very active in Columbia playing music from many eras in a wide range of settings: Bach and Beethoven at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Charles Ives, Philip Glass, Olivier Messiaen and John Zorn at the USC Southern Exposure series, and Glass and Bach at The White Mule nightclub. Each summer he goes to Vermont where he is music director of The Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East. His most recent recording “The Complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano” by Beethoven was released earlier this year.

California violist Helen Callus has performed with Bush several times including for the NPR program “St. Paul Sunday.”

"He loves what he does, and he also has that balance of being a nice person and sensitive," said "His range is limitless. I know from playing with him that he can play anything beautifully."