Dear Friends,
I was fortunate enough to be at "Doctuh" Michael Woods New Grooves for an American Orchestra Concert on May 2 at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.
Hamilton has a beautiful hilltop campus in the lovely town of Clinton, a couple of hours east of Albany and not far from Utica, so at first I expected a more traditional type pf concert. Their Wellin Hall theater is exceptionally lovely, a little outside the norm for such presentations, but again nothing that would lead you to expect a new groove.
However, the warmth of Doc Woods personality and music, the wonderful time spent with William Banfield and Diane Monroe, to say nothing of their superb collective and individual performances at the May 2 concert, and Wellin Hall's great, "grows on you", audience-friendly environment for such a concert made this a special and memorable evening.
Doc is onto something here, and is truly creating New Grooves for American Orchestras. He realizes that the old formulas aren't working anymore and that you can actually enjoy yourself in the classical concert hall as much as you can in the "popular", if the people onstage enjoy themselves and offer a little encouragement to the audience to cut loose.
His titles like 'Back to Bass Licks' and 'Rakinda House' will give you a clue of what he's up to, but only when you hear him playing a very funky bass line, or the wonderful Diane Monroe's fiddle improvs, or the expansive and often lush music of William Banfield do you really begin to consider the limitless possibilities of these New Grooves.
You'll be hearing more about this music and this wonderful composer, and I hope that American orchestras will get with the program and find some New Grooves for themselves and their audiences.
Jeff James
Associate Professor of Music "Doctuh" Michael Woods is the Director of Jazz Studies at Hamilton College.
Born in Akron, Ohio in 1952, he grew up listening to Black gospel music and rhythm and blues. Woods studied music formally at Akron University where he finished with a B.M. degree in composition. He went on to obtain two masters degrees from Indiana University. Woods received his doctorate degree in music composition at University of Oklahoma in 1991.
Woods also studied jazz arranging and film scoring at Berklee College of Music in Boston and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Arts Administration. As a composer, Woods was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has written over 500 pieces in all styles. His compositions have been performed by the Albany Symphony, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Little Rock Symphony, the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Lafayette Symphony (Indiana), the Pro Musica Orchestra (Columbus, Indiana), the Central New York Jazz Orchestra, and the Salt City Jazz Collective.
"New Grooves for an American Orchestra" Concert Review
