Dr. JEFFREY WOOD
composition, theory, keyboard

Jeffrey Wood studied composition and piano at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He pursued graduate studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Long Island, where he studied piano under Gilbert Kalish and composition under David Lewin, earning Master’s degrees in both piano performance and composition and a Ph.D. in composition.

Dr. Wood’s compositions have been performed throughout the country and have received many awards including Broadcast Music, Inc., Awards in 1975, 1978 and 1979, an award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1981, and the 1982 David S. Bates Memorial Prize. He was the highest prize winner in the 1984 Stroud Festival International Composition Competition in Great Britain, the only American so cited, for his brass quintet In Memoriam Magistri. This work was subsequently performed by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble during the 1984 Festival. For his Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, commissioned by the Music Teacher’s National Association, Wood was named Distinguished Composer of the Year in 1985. Wood has received commissions from the Governor’s School for the Arts in Tennessee, National Musical Arts, Washington, D.C., the Quintet of the Americas, and the Center for the Creative Arts at Austin Peay State University. A CD recording of his woodwind quintet Comedies, as performed by the Quintet of the Americas, was released in 1991. More recent recordings have included Kriegeslieder [Songs of War] and The Habit of Grief for solo guitar on a CD issued in February 1998. A CD recording of Wood’s Lullay, My Child as was also released in 1998.

Wood has written a substantial amount of vocal music, including three large song cycles, MCMXIV for tenor and piano, Kriegeslieder, for mezzo-soprano and piano, and Till Time and Times are Done for soprano, tenor and piano. His cantata The Dream of the Rood, for tenor solo, chorus and organ, was premièred at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame. A chamber opera entitled Diaries: a Parable for Voices, based on the stories of women who served as nurses during World War I and poetry of E. E. Cummings, David Jones, Archibald MacLeish, Israel Zangwill, Marianne Moore and Carl Sandburg was given a fully staged première in 1996. More recently an oratorio for chorus, vocal soloists and string orchestra Lamentationes Ieremiæ Prophetæ (Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet), based on the biblical text and the poetry of Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs and Dan Pagis, was given its first performance in 1999 by the Austin Peay State University Chamber Singers and the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, conducted by George Mabry.

During 1987-1988 Wood held the Individual Artist Fellowship in Composition from the Tennessee Arts Commission, with a matching grant from the Joan Harrell Schaeffer Foundation. Recent grants have included a research fellowship from the Tower Foundation of Austin Peay State University for 1990-1991. In 1988 Wood was awarded the Richard M. Hawkins Award for scholarship and creativity by Austin Peay State University.

Wood was named a winner of the 1995 Young American’s Art Song Competition sponsored by G. Schirmer/Associated Music Publishers, which resulted in the inclusion of one of the songs from the cycle MCMXIV in an "The Art Song Collection" published in June, 1996. Also in 1996 a work for solo guitar, The Habit of Grief, was a prize winner in the Guitar Foundation of America Set-Piece Competition.

As a pianist Wood has appeared in solo and chamber music recitals throughout the United States. In 1983 he was one of fourteen finalists chosen to compete in the United States Information Agency’s Artistic Ambassador Program at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He has also been a featured composer/performer at the International Composer’s Symposia at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Wood is deeply committed to the performance of contemporary music, and has been involved in the world premières of Elizabeth Vercoe’s monodrama based on the life of John Brown, A Dangerous Man and Alan Hovhaness’ Concerto No. 10 for Piano, String Quartet and Trumpet, op. 413. He has worked with composers such as Roger Sessions, Ernst Krenek, Thea Musgrave, Mario Davidovsky and Frederic Goossen in performances of their keyboard music. He also coordinates an annual Young Composer’s Competition through the Center for the Creative Arts at Austin Peay.

E-mail: WoodJ@apsu.edu
Phone: (931) 221-7819