Cellist

Cellist Kenneth Woods is fast becoming recognized as a musician of rare versatility, equally at home as conductor, recitalist, chamber musician and soloist.

A founding member of the NEA Rural Residency Grant winning Taliesin Trio, he has concertized throughout the US and Canada, and has also been heard as soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe and New Zealand. He has also been the cellist of the Masala String Quartet from 1993-1999. He was artist-in-residence, member of the Eastern Piano Trio while serving as director of strings and chamber music at Eastern Oregon University from 1999-2002. Since 2008, he has been the  cellist of the string trio Ensemble Epomeo, with whom he records and concertizes regularly. The Ensemble’s debut CD, featuring world-premiere recordings of the string trios of Hans Gal paired with those of Hans Krasa, was released in 2012 on Avie Records to international acclaim, selected as a Gramophone Critic’s Choice, Disc of the Month on MusicWeb and hailed by The Strad as a “thought provoking disc.”

Concerto appearances include the Aspen Music Festival, the Grande Ronde Symphony, Cambridge Symphony,  Gonzaga Symphony, Boston Chamber Orchestra, Lancashire Chamber Orchestra, Blue Mountain Festival Chamber Orchestra, Oregon East Symphony, and the Madison Philomusica. He has been heard in radio broadcasts on NPR and the CBC, and recorded for Vienna Modern Masters.

Festival appearances include the Festival at Sandpoint, Great Lakes Chamber Festival, Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, Schloss Weinberg Festival in Austria, Chautauqua Institute, Domaine Forget Festival in Canada, Wallowa Lake Chamber Music Festival and the International Festival Institute at Round Top. In 2013, he appears as cellist at the Newburyport and Two Rivers festivals, and with Ensemble Epomeo, will be artist in residence at the Scotia Festival of Music in Canada.

Intensely committed to new music, Mr. Woods has collaborated with such composers as Bruce Adolphe, Gerhard Samuel, John Corigliano, Oliver Knussen, and Peter Lieberson, and has given numerous premieres. As a cellist he has been recipient of the Aspen Fellowship, and is the only person to have received the Dale Gilbert Award, given annually to the “Outstanding String Performer in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music” in consecutive years. Also while in Madison, he held the Strelow Quartet Fellowship, as a member of the graduate quartet-in-
residence.

Kenneth Woods chamber music colleagues include members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Pro Arte, Audubon, La Salle and Tokyo Quartets,  the Cincinnati, Chicago, and Toronto Symphonies, and the Minnesota, Gewandhaus and Concertgebouw Orchestras.

Kenneth Woods plays a cello of Italian origin believed to be made by Antonio Mariani in the mid-1600’s