Marty Wimmer
BTPM Classical Midday Host/ProducerMarty Wimmer has been with BTPM Classical since 1995. He is our Midday Host and Coordinator of BTPM Classical Live on Stage! A retired music teacher with 34 years of experience in the band room, chorus room, and general music classroom, Marty also taught at the college level, worked as a church musician, and directed high school musicals. His music degrees are from Syracuse University and the University at Buffalo with additional study at Berklee.
As a composer, Marty won first prize in the 2010 Unitarian-Universalist Choral Competition and was a finalist in the 2007 Ithaca College Choral Composition Competition. His music is published by Imagine Music Publishing and has been performed locally by the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus, the Freudig Singers, Vocalis, the Buffalo Niagara Youth Chorus, the Chromatic Club, and other school and church ensembles. His choral work Through Music is included in the NYSSMA manual as a competition piece.
Marty grew-up near Syracuse. His uncle and cousin were both world welterweight boxing champions. When Marty’s fingers weren’t on the piano keyboard, they were inside boxing gloves. He says the piano hurt more.
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March 7th marks Ravel’s 150th birthday. We’ll celebrate on WNED Classical with several Ravel masterworks. RAVEL is cool – always has been – always will be. But what makes Ravel the Fonzi of classical music? -
High school musicals are a tradition in WNY and once again BTPM Classical is celebrating them on the air! -
We’re celebrating two big composer birthdays in 2025 on BTPM Classical – Giovanni Palestrina and Johann Strauss, Jr. -
I had a milestone birthday in June. I talked about it in my recent blog post, The BINGO Card of Life. Since then, I’ve made changes. Not big changes – just small ones to make this decade a little healthier and more interesting than the last. -
I’m in good company having thinning hair. Some of my favorite composers had thinning hair too. The brilliant Camille Saint-Saëns went bald. So did Eric Satie, Jean Sibelius, Aaron Copland, and Modest Mussorgsky. In fact, Mussorgsky even wrote a symphonic poem called, Night On Bald Mountain. -
Last week we celebrated my son’s eighteenth birthday. He’s in the “I” column on The BINGO Card of Life. The “I” column represents the ages of sixteen to thirty – exciting years filled with big decisions. I hope he enjoys these years. I also hope he’ll ask for my advice with big decisions. I didn’t ask for advice with big decisions when I was his age, and although they’re now my best stories, I could have lived without the stress they brought. -
I just celebrated a milestone birthday. Some guy at a pub informed me that my current age is the last number in the “G” column on The BINGO Card of Life. He likened age to the number groupings on BINGO cards. -
I just read that a critic dubbed Taylor Swift a poetic genius in the same league as William Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson. I’m not familiar enough with Taylor Swift’s songs to judge their overall quality, but I have heard a handful of them. I imagine it’s heady to be compared to The Bard and The Belle of Amherst. Not surprisingly, this well-intended comparison brought out haters. That stinks. I hope Ms. Swift can shake it off. -
I can’t tell you how many things I’ve wasted money on in my life. Most of the time they were things I hoped would make me better looking, or smarter, or appear upwardly mobile. If I had all that money back today, I could probably retire to Mykonos and spend my afternoons sipping ouzo on the beach. -
Marty reflects on Season One of "BTPM Classical Live on Stage", and looks ahead to what Season 2 will bring.
