An Evening with Award-Winning Cellist, Seth Parker Woods

I. Prélude
II. Allemande
IV. Sarabande

Approximate Duration: 0:10

Program Notes: Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 is one of the most beloved works in the solo cello repertoire, admired for its elegance and clarity. The Prélude opens the suite with a flowing, arpeggiated texture, creating a sense of continuous motion and harmonic warmth. The Allemande, a stately yet expressive dance, showcases Bach’s gift for lyrical phrasing and intricate counterpoint. The Sarabande serves as the emotional heart of the suite, its slow, meditative character emphasizing depth and resonance. Through these movements, Bach blends technical brilliance with profound musical expression, making this suite a timeless cornerstone of the cello repertoire.

Hailed by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace” who possesses “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” three-time GRAMMY®-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. Woods’ projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future. As The New York Times wrote, “Woods is an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys.” Also at the forefront of fashion, Woods has topped the “Best Dressed” lists in Variety, Texas Monthly, and OC Register, among others. He is an honoree of the 2023 Seattle Symphony’s 25th Anniversary Silver Gala and recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award. Woods has served on the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at The University of Southern California since 2022, and was appointed to the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music in 2024.

Among the highlights of his 2024-2025 season, Woods performs in the world premiere of Nathalie Joachim’s new cello concerto, Had to Be, at Spoleto Festival USA. He later performs the same piece in its New York premiere as he makes his debut with the New York Philharmonic. Among his other upcoming engagements, Woods performs the East Coast premiere of Rebecca Saunders’ cello concerto Ire as 2024 Guest Artist with The Next Festival of Emerging Artists. He later makes his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut in the world premiere of a new cello concerto by Julia Adolphe. A core member of the music collective Wild Up, Woods is also a featured soloist in the fourth release of Wild Up’s GRAMMY®-nominated Eastman Project: Eastman Vol. 4: The Holy Presence, an exploration of composer Julius Eastman’s works on religious themes released June 21, 2024 on New Amsterdam Records and nominated for a 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. In a second new release due out this season on Sono Luminus Recordings, Woods is featured alongside flutist Claire Chase on a recording of music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

During the 2023-2024 season, Woods brought his GRAMMY®-nominated, autobiographical tour-de-force Difficult Grace — described as “dazzlingly inventive” (Gramophone Magazine) and “a feast for the ears, eyes and mind” (The New York Times) — to San Diego and Philadelphia. Difficult Grace was premiered at 92NY in the 2022-2023 season with choreographer Roderick George, followed by performances at UCLA and Chicago’s Harris Theater. It was released as an album on Cedille Records in 2023 and nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Woods performed the Boston premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s UBIQUE at Harvard University and featured in a pair of performances with GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn at Konzerthaus Dortmund in Germany. With American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), Woods toured a new version of John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered with libretto by Peter Sellars, concept by AMOC member Julia Bullock. He appeared in two performances of Fallen Petals, a program commissioned by Chamber Music Detroit that was inspired by stories of juvenile offenders serving life in prison.

In the 2022-2023 season, Woods curated and performed a program honoring the centennial of composer George Walker at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; premiered Freida Abtan’s My Heart is a River, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony; and performed in a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir at Carnegie Hall as part of Claire Chase’s Density Series. The Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis presented Woods in his critically acclaimed performance installation, Iced Bodies, in which Woods, in a wetsuit, plays an obsidian ice cello. He also performed on the soundtrack of the PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust—a film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. Woods also became a member of celebrated new music ensemble Wild Up, with whom he was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY® Award.

In addition to solo performances, Woods has appeared with the ICTUS Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L’Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), Ensemble LPR, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Atlanta and Seattle Symphonies, and in chamber music with Hilary Hahn and pianist Andreas Haefliger. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with a wide range of artists ranging from the classical world, such as Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, G. F. Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, and Peter Eötvos; popular musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Rachael Yamagata; and visual artists as Ron Athey, Vanessa Beecroft, Jack Early, Adam Pendleton, and Aldo Tambellini. In the 2021-2022 season, he also premiered concertos by Rebecca Saunders and Tyshawn Sorey.

In recent years, Woods has appeared in concert at the Royal Albert Hall – BBC Proms, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Festival, Snape Maltings Festival, the Ghent Festival, Washington Performing Arts, Strathmore, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington D.C.), The Isabella Gardner Museum (Boston), The Wallis Annenberg Center (Beverly Hills), Das Haus (Brussels), Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Le Poisson Rouge, Cafe OTO, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klang Festival-Durham, INTER/ actions Symposium, ICMC-SMS Conference (Athens, GR), NIME-London, Sound and Body Festival, Instalakcje Festival, Virginia Tech, La Salle College (Singapore), and FINDARS (Malaysia), amongst others. Recent awards include a DCASE artist grant, Earle Brown/ Morton Feldman Foundation Grant, McGill University-CIRMMT/IDMIL Visiting Researcher Residency, Centre Intermondes Artist Residency, Francis Chagrin Award, Concours Re]connaissance-Premiere Prix, and the Paul Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship.

asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), has garnered great acclaim since its release in November 2016 and has been profiled in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Guardian, 5against4, I Care If You Listen, Musical America, Seattle Times, and Strings Magazine, amongst others.

In addition to his post at The University of Southern California, Woods serves on the artist faculty of the Music Academy of the West each summer and has previously served on the faculties of the University at Buffalo, University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, and the Chicago Academy of the Arts and as Artist in Residence at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and Northwestern University – Center for New Music. He holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield. In the 2020-21 season, he was an Artist in Residence with Kaufman Music Center, and from 2018-2020 he served as Artist in Residence with Seattle Symphony and Creative Consultant for the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.

Seth Parker Woods is a Pirastro Artist and endorses Pirastro Perpetual Strings worldwide.

Approximate Duration: 0:05

Program Notes: Dam Mwen Yo, Haitian Creole for “my ladies,” is a 2016 work for cello and recorded voices by Nathalie Joachim. In Haiti, women are seen as symbols of strength. Commissioned by Amanda Gookin for The Forward Music Project.

Nathalie Joachim is a Grammy-nominated performer and composer. The Haitian-American artist is hailed for being “a fresh and invigorating cross-cultural voice” (The Nation). Her creative practice centers an authentic commitment to storytelling and human connectivity while advocating for social change and cultural awareness, gaining her the reputation of being “powerful and unpretentious.” (The New York Times)

Ms. Joachim is Assistant Professor of Composition at Princeton University and is regularly commissioned to write for orchestra, instrumental and vocal ensembles, dance, and interdisciplinary theater. Recent and upcoming highlights include new works for the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Grant Park Music Festival and more. Her landmark project, Fanm d’Ayiti, an evening-length work for flute, voice, string quartet and electronics, celebrates and explores her personal Haitian heritage and received a GRAMMY nomination for Best World Music Album. Joachim’s highly anticipated sophomore album, Ki moun ou ye – an intimate examination of ancestral connection and self – was co-released by Nonesuch Records and New Amsterdam Records in early 2024, and deemed “one of the year’s most creatively and personally ambitious albums.” (SPIN Magazine)

Joachim is a 2024-45 Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum of Modern Art, a United States Artist Fellow and co-founder of the critically acclaimed duo Flutronix. She is an alumnus of The Juilliard School and The New School.

To learn more, visit nathaliejoachim.com.

Hailed by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace” who possesses “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” three-time GRAMMY®-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. Woods’ projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future. As The New York Times wrote, “Woods is an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys.” Also at the forefront of fashion, Woods has topped the “Best Dressed” lists in Variety, Texas Monthly, and OC Register, among others. He is an honoree of the 2023 Seattle Symphony’s 25th Anniversary Silver Gala and recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award. Woods has served on the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at The University of Southern California since 2022, and was appointed to the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music in 2024.

Among the highlights of his 2024-2025 season, Woods performs in the world premiere of Nathalie Joachim’s new cello concerto, Had to Be, at Spoleto Festival USA. He later performs the same piece in its New York premiere as he makes his debut with the New York Philharmonic. Among his other upcoming engagements, Woods performs the East Coast premiere of Rebecca Saunders’ cello concerto Ire as 2024 Guest Artist with The Next Festival of Emerging Artists. He later makes his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut in the world premiere of a new cello concerto by Julia Adolphe. A core member of the music collective Wild Up, Woods is also a featured soloist in the fourth release of Wild Up’s GRAMMY®-nominated Eastman Project: Eastman Vol. 4: The Holy Presence, an exploration of composer Julius Eastman’s works on religious themes released June 21, 2024 on New Amsterdam Records and nominated for a 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. In a second new release due out this season on Sono Luminus Recordings, Woods is featured alongside flutist Claire Chase on a recording of music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

During the 2023-2024 season, Woods brought his GRAMMY®-nominated, autobiographical tour-de-force Difficult Grace — described as “dazzlingly inventive” (Gramophone Magazine) and “a feast for the ears, eyes and mind” (The New York Times) — to San Diego and Philadelphia. Difficult Grace was premiered at 92NY in the 2022-2023 season with choreographer Roderick George, followed by performances at UCLA and Chicago’s Harris Theater. It was released as an album on Cedille Records in 2023 and nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Woods performed the Boston premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s UBIQUE at Harvard University and featured in a pair of performances with GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn at Konzerthaus Dortmund in Germany. With American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), Woods toured a new version of John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered with libretto by Peter Sellars, concept by AMOC member Julia Bullock. He appeared in two performances of Fallen Petals, a program commissioned by Chamber Music Detroit that was inspired by stories of juvenile offenders serving life in prison.

In the 2022-2023 season, Woods curated and performed a program honoring the centennial of composer George Walker at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; premiered Freida Abtan’s My Heart is a River, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony; and performed in a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir at Carnegie Hall as part of Claire Chase’s Density Series. The Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis presented Woods in his critically acclaimed performance installation, Iced Bodies, in which Woods, in a wetsuit, plays an obsidian ice cello. He also performed on the soundtrack of the PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust—a film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. Woods also became a member of celebrated new music ensemble Wild Up, with whom he was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY® Award.

In addition to solo performances, Woods has appeared with the ICTUS Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L’Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), Ensemble LPR, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Atlanta and Seattle Symphonies, and in chamber music with Hilary Hahn and pianist Andreas Haefliger. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with a wide range of artists ranging from the classical world, such as Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, G. F. Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, and Peter Eötvos; popular musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Rachael Yamagata; and visual artists as Ron Athey, Vanessa Beecroft, Jack Early, Adam Pendleton, and Aldo Tambellini. In the 2021-2022 season, he also premiered concertos by Rebecca Saunders and Tyshawn Sorey.

In recent years, Woods has appeared in concert at the Royal Albert Hall – BBC Proms, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Festival, Snape Maltings Festival, the Ghent Festival, Washington Performing Arts, Strathmore, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington D.C.), The Isabella Gardner Museum (Boston), The Wallis Annenberg Center (Beverly Hills), Das Haus (Brussels), Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Le Poisson Rouge, Cafe OTO, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klang Festival-Durham, INTER/ actions Symposium, ICMC-SMS Conference (Athens, GR), NIME-London, Sound and Body Festival, Instalakcje Festival, Virginia Tech, La Salle College (Singapore), and FINDARS (Malaysia), amongst others. Recent awards include a DCASE artist grant, Earle Brown/ Morton Feldman Foundation Grant, McGill University-CIRMMT/IDMIL Visiting Researcher Residency, Centre Intermondes Artist Residency, Francis Chagrin Award, Concours Re]connaissance-Premiere Prix, and the Paul Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship.

asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), has garnered great acclaim since its release in November 2016 and has been profiled in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Guardian, 5against4, I Care If You Listen, Musical America, Seattle Times, and Strings Magazine, amongst others.

In addition to his post at The University of Southern California, Woods serves on the artist faculty of the Music Academy of the West each summer and has previously served on the faculties of the University at Buffalo, University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, and the Chicago Academy of the Arts and as Artist in Residence at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and Northwestern University – Center for New Music. He holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield. In the 2020-21 season, he was an Artist in Residence with Kaufman Music Center, and from 2018-2020 he served as Artist in Residence with Seattle Symphony and Creative Consultant for the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.

Seth Parker Woods is a Pirastro Artist and endorses Pirastro Perpetual Strings worldwide.

Approximate Duration: 0:04

Program Notes: Bill Traylor was born a slave in Alabama in 1853 and died in 1949. He lived long enough to witness significant social and political changes in the United States, including the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, and the Great Migration. As a self-taught visual artist, his work reflects two separate worlds—rural and urban, black and white, old and new. In many ways, the simplified forms in Traylor’s artwork speak to the complexity of his world, his creativity, and his inspiring bid for self-definition in a dehumanizing segregated culture. This piece is inspired by the evocative nature of Traylor’s work as a whole, rather than any one specific piece. Themes of mystical folklore, race, and religion pervade Traylor’s work. I imagine these solo pieces as a musical study, hopefully capturing Traylor’s life between these disparate worlds.

Text related to Bill Traylor and the project title “Between Worlds” are borrowed from, and organized in relation to, Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor by Leslie Umberger for the Smithsonian American Art Museum (book and exhibition, 2018).

Notes by Carlos Simon, via carlossimonmusic.com.

“My dad, he always gets on me. He wants me to be a preacher, but I always tell him, ‘Music is my pulpit. That’s where I preach,’” Carlos Simon reflected for The Washington Post. Having grown up in Atlanta, with a long lineage of preachers and connections to gospel music to inspire him, GRAMMY-nominated Simon proves that a well-composed song can indeed be a sermon. His music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism.
Simon is the current Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and frequently writes for the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera. Simon also holds the position of inaugural Composer Chair of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the first in the institution’s 143-year history.

In the 2024/25 season, Simon will have premiere performances with the National Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra for the Last Night of the Proms (in his BBC Proms commissioning debut), Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Carnegie Hall for the National Youth Orchestra of the USA. The season also features the premiere of Simon’s Gospel Mass with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic, a work reimagining the traditional mass with gospel soloists and choir, with visual creations from Melina Matsoukas (Beyoncé Formation, Queen and Slim).

This follows previous commissions from the likes of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera (in collaboration with Mo Willems), New York Philharmonic and Bravo! Vail, Minnesota Orchestra, American Ballet Theatre, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra. As well as his composition work, Simon frequently curates concert programmes, which often highlight his own music as well as that of close collaborators. Curation concerts have recently been programmed by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boston Chamber Players, Tanglewood Festival for Contemporary Music, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Simon also curated and arranged Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra, a new project co-commissioned by TO Live (for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra) and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, in partnership with the Coltrane Estate.

August 2024 saw the release of Simon’s first full-length orchestral album, Four Symphonic Works, comprised of live concert recordings by the National Symphony Orchestra from the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. Simon also composed the original soundtrack for the PBS documentary Shame of Chicago: Shame of the Nation, which was released as a digital album in April 2024. In September 2023, Simon released two albums on Decca. Together is a compilation of solo and chamber compositions and arrangements featuring Simon and guests such as J’Nai Bridges, Randall Goosby, Seth Parker Woods and Will Liverman. The work draws on Carlos’ personal experience as an artist to highlight the importance of heritage and identity, and the power of collaborative music-making. Simon also released the live premiere recording of brea(d)th, a landmark work commissioned by Minnesota Orchestra and written in collaboration with Marc Bamuthi Joseph, conducted by Jonathan Taylor Rush. “Arguably the most important commission of Simon’s career so far” (New York Times), brea(d)th was written following George Floyd’s murder as a direct response to America’s unfulfilled promises and history of systemic oppression against Black Americans.

Simon was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for his previous album, Requiem for the Enslaved. The requiem is a multi-genre musical tribute to commemorate the stories of the 272 enslaved men, women, and children sold in 1838 by Georgetown University, released by Decca in June 2022. This work sees Simon infuse his original compositions with African American spirituals and familiar Catholic liturgical melodies, performed by Hub New Music Ensemble, Marco Pavé, and MK Zulu. Acting as music director and keyboardist for GRAMMY Award winner Jennifer Holliday, Simon has performed with Boston Pops, Jackson Symphony, and St. Louis Symphony. He has also toured internationally with soul GRAMMY-nominated artist Angie Stone and performed throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Simon earned his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. He has also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College. He is an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Music Sinfonia Fraternity and a member of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Society of Composers International, and Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society. He has served as a member of the music faculty at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia and now serves as Associate Professor at Georgetown University. Simon was also a recipient of the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization to recognize extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians, and was named a Sundance/Time Warner Composer Fellow for his work for film and moving image.

To learn more, visit carlossimonmusic.com

Hailed by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace” who possesses “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” three-time GRAMMY®-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. Woods’ projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future. As The New York Times wrote, “Woods is an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys.” Also at the forefront of fashion, Woods has topped the “Best Dressed” lists in Variety, Texas Monthly, and OC Register, among others. He is an honoree of the 2023 Seattle Symphony’s 25th Anniversary Silver Gala and recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award. Woods has served on the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at The University of Southern California since 2022, and was appointed to the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music in 2024.

Among the highlights of his 2024-2025 season, Woods performs in the world premiere of Nathalie Joachim’s new cello concerto, Had to Be, at Spoleto Festival USA. He later performs the same piece in its New York premiere as he makes his debut with the New York Philharmonic. Among his other upcoming engagements, Woods performs the East Coast premiere of Rebecca Saunders’ cello concerto Ire as 2024 Guest Artist with The Next Festival of Emerging Artists. He later makes his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut in the world premiere of a new cello concerto by Julia Adolphe. A core member of the music collective Wild Up, Woods is also a featured soloist in the fourth release of Wild Up’s GRAMMY®-nominated Eastman Project: Eastman Vol. 4: The Holy Presence, an exploration of composer Julius Eastman’s works on religious themes released June 21, 2024 on New Amsterdam Records and nominated for a 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. In a second new release due out this season on Sono Luminus Recordings, Woods is featured alongside flutist Claire Chase on a recording of music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

During the 2023-2024 season, Woods brought his GRAMMY®-nominated, autobiographical tour-de-force Difficult Grace — described as “dazzlingly inventive” (Gramophone Magazine) and “a feast for the ears, eyes and mind” (The New York Times) — to San Diego and Philadelphia. Difficult Grace was premiered at 92NY in the 2022-2023 season with choreographer Roderick George, followed by performances at UCLA and Chicago’s Harris Theater. It was released as an album on Cedille Records in 2023 and nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Woods performed the Boston premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s UBIQUE at Harvard University and featured in a pair of performances with GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn at Konzerthaus Dortmund in Germany. With American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), Woods toured a new version of John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered with libretto by Peter Sellars, concept by AMOC member Julia Bullock. He appeared in two performances of Fallen Petals, a program commissioned by Chamber Music Detroit that was inspired by stories of juvenile offenders serving life in prison.

In the 2022-2023 season, Woods curated and performed a program honoring the centennial of composer George Walker at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; premiered Freida Abtan’s My Heart is a River, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony; and performed in a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir at Carnegie Hall as part of Claire Chase’s Density Series. The Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis presented Woods in his critically acclaimed performance installation, Iced Bodies, in which Woods, in a wetsuit, plays an obsidian ice cello. He also performed on the soundtrack of the PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust—a film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. Woods also became a member of celebrated new music ensemble Wild Up, with whom he was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY® Award.

In addition to solo performances, Woods has appeared with the ICTUS Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L’Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), Ensemble LPR, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Atlanta and Seattle Symphonies, and in chamber music with Hilary Hahn and pianist Andreas Haefliger. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with a wide range of artists ranging from the classical world, such as Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, G. F. Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, and Peter Eötvos; popular musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Rachael Yamagata; and visual artists as Ron Athey, Vanessa Beecroft, Jack Early, Adam Pendleton, and Aldo Tambellini. In the 2021-2022 season, he also premiered concertos by Rebecca Saunders and Tyshawn Sorey.

In recent years, Woods has appeared in concert at the Royal Albert Hall – BBC Proms, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Festival, Snape Maltings Festival, the Ghent Festival, Washington Performing Arts, Strathmore, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington D.C.), The Isabella Gardner Museum (Boston), The Wallis Annenberg Center (Beverly Hills), Das Haus (Brussels), Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Le Poisson Rouge, Cafe OTO, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klang Festival-Durham, INTER/ actions Symposium, ICMC-SMS Conference (Athens, GR), NIME-London, Sound and Body Festival, Instalakcje Festival, Virginia Tech, La Salle College (Singapore), and FINDARS (Malaysia), amongst others. Recent awards include a DCASE artist grant, Earle Brown/ Morton Feldman Foundation Grant, McGill University-CIRMMT/IDMIL Visiting Researcher Residency, Centre Intermondes Artist Residency, Francis Chagrin Award, Concours Re]connaissance-Premiere Prix, and the Paul Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship.

asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), has garnered great acclaim since its release in November 2016 and has been profiled in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Guardian, 5against4, I Care If You Listen, Musical America, Seattle Times, and Strings Magazine, amongst others.

In addition to his post at The University of Southern California, Woods serves on the artist faculty of the Music Academy of the West each summer and has previously served on the faculties of the University at Buffalo, University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, and the Chicago Academy of the Arts and as Artist in Residence at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and Northwestern University – Center for New Music. He holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield. In the 2020-21 season, he was an Artist in Residence with Kaufman Music Center, and from 2018-2020 he served as Artist in Residence with Seattle Symphony and Creative Consultant for the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.

Seth Parker Woods is a Pirastro Artist and endorses Pirastro Perpetual Strings worldwide.

Approximate Duration: 0:11

Program Notes: Winter Tendrils is a composition for solo cello, 16-channel electronics, and film by Zoe McLean, written by Monty Adkins. Premiered by Seth Parker Woods at Octave 9, Seattle Symphony Hall, USA on February 9, 2020, the piece explores the contrast between textural immersion and delicate melodic linearity. These opposing elements are mirrored in the film, where falling snow and the movement of vast bodies of water—two different physical forms of the same element—reflect the music’s tension and balance.

Monty Adkins is a composer and performer of experimental electronic music. He primarily creates digital audio works and installations. Since 2008, his sound works has become increasingly minimal and introspective, characterised by slow shifting organic instrumental and concrete soundscapes, focusing on encouraging a deeper immersive listening experience. Using a reduced sonic palette, he draws together elements from ambient, minimal electronica, acousmatic and experimental electronic music often combining instrumental and electronic sound.

His works have been performed at and commissioned by leading international festivals and institutions (including INA-GRM, IRCAM, BBC Radio 3, SpACE-Net, ZKM Karlsruhe, Sonic Arts Network, Visionas Sonoras, Bourges Festival, Akousma, IOU Theatre, and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation) and released on labels worldwide including Audiobulb (UK), empreintes DIGITALes (Québec), Crónica (Portugal), Signature (France), Eilean (France), and LINE (USA).

To learn more, visit monty-admins.com.

Hailed by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace” who possesses “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” three-time GRAMMY®-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. Woods’ projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future. As The New York Times wrote, “Woods is an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys.” Also at the forefront of fashion, Woods has topped the “Best Dressed” lists in Variety, Texas Monthly, and OC Register, among others. He is an honoree of the 2023 Seattle Symphony’s 25th Anniversary Silver Gala and recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award. Woods has served on the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at The University of Southern California since 2022, and was appointed to the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music in 2024.

Among the highlights of his 2024-2025 season, Woods performs in the world premiere of Nathalie Joachim’s new cello concerto, Had to Be, at Spoleto Festival USA. He later performs the same piece in its New York premiere as he makes his debut with the New York Philharmonic. Among his other upcoming engagements, Woods performs the East Coast premiere of Rebecca Saunders’ cello concerto Ire as 2024 Guest Artist with The Next Festival of Emerging Artists. He later makes his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut in the world premiere of a new cello concerto by Julia Adolphe. A core member of the music collective Wild Up, Woods is also a featured soloist in the fourth release of Wild Up’s GRAMMY®-nominated Eastman Project: Eastman Vol. 4: The Holy Presence, an exploration of composer Julius Eastman’s works on religious themes released June 21, 2024 on New Amsterdam Records and nominated for a 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. In a second new release due out this season on Sono Luminus Recordings, Woods is featured alongside flutist Claire Chase on a recording of music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

During the 2023-2024 season, Woods brought his GRAMMY®-nominated, autobiographical tour-de-force Difficult Grace — described as “dazzlingly inventive” (Gramophone Magazine) and “a feast for the ears, eyes and mind” (The New York Times) — to San Diego and Philadelphia. Difficult Grace was premiered at 92NY in the 2022-2023 season with choreographer Roderick George, followed by performances at UCLA and Chicago’s Harris Theater. It was released as an album on Cedille Records in 2023 and nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Woods performed the Boston premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s UBIQUE at Harvard University and featured in a pair of performances with GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn at Konzerthaus Dortmund in Germany. With American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), Woods toured a new version of John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered with libretto by Peter Sellars, concept by AMOC member Julia Bullock. He appeared in two performances of Fallen Petals, a program commissioned by Chamber Music Detroit that was inspired by stories of juvenile offenders serving life in prison.

In the 2022-2023 season, Woods curated and performed a program honoring the centennial of composer George Walker at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; premiered Freida Abtan’s My Heart is a River, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony; and performed in a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir at Carnegie Hall as part of Claire Chase’s Density Series. The Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis presented Woods in his critically acclaimed performance installation, Iced Bodies, in which Woods, in a wetsuit, plays an obsidian ice cello. He also performed on the soundtrack of the PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust—a film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. Woods also became a member of celebrated new music ensemble Wild Up, with whom he was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY® Award.

In addition to solo performances, Woods has appeared with the ICTUS Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L’Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), Ensemble LPR, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Atlanta and Seattle Symphonies, and in chamber music with Hilary Hahn and pianist Andreas Haefliger. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with a wide range of artists ranging from the classical world, such as Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, G. F. Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, and Peter Eötvos; popular musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Rachael Yamagata; and visual artists as Ron Athey, Vanessa Beecroft, Jack Early, Adam Pendleton, and Aldo Tambellini. In the 2021-2022 season, he also premiered concertos by Rebecca Saunders and Tyshawn Sorey.

In recent years, Woods has appeared in concert at the Royal Albert Hall – BBC Proms, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Festival, Snape Maltings Festival, the Ghent Festival, Washington Performing Arts, Strathmore, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington D.C.), The Isabella Gardner Museum (Boston), The Wallis Annenberg Center (Beverly Hills), Das Haus (Brussels), Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Le Poisson Rouge, Cafe OTO, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klang Festival-Durham, INTER/ actions Symposium, ICMC-SMS Conference (Athens, GR), NIME-London, Sound and Body Festival, Instalakcje Festival, Virginia Tech, La Salle College (Singapore), and FINDARS (Malaysia), amongst others. Recent awards include a DCASE artist grant, Earle Brown/ Morton Feldman Foundation Grant, McGill University-CIRMMT/IDMIL Visiting Researcher Residency, Centre Intermondes Artist Residency, Francis Chagrin Award, Concours Re]connaissance-Premiere Prix, and the Paul Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship.

asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), has garnered great acclaim since its release in November 2016 and has been profiled in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Guardian, 5against4, I Care If You Listen, Musical America, Seattle Times, and Strings Magazine, amongst others.

In addition to his post at The University of Southern California, Woods serves on the artist faculty of the Music Academy of the West each summer and has previously served on the faculties of the University at Buffalo, University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, and the Chicago Academy of the Arts and as Artist in Residence at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and Northwestern University – Center for New Music. He holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield. In the 2020-21 season, he was an Artist in Residence with Kaufman Music Center, and from 2018-2020 he served as Artist in Residence with Seattle Symphony and Creative Consultant for the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.

Seth Parker Woods is a Pirastro Artist and endorses Pirastro Perpetual Strings worldwide.

I. Allegro serioso, non troppo

Approximate Duration: 0:09

Program Notes: Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7 is a strikingly inventive work that blends folk-inspired melodies with rich counterpoint and expressive depth. The first movement, Allegro serioso, non troppo, is intense and dramatic, with the violin and cello engaged in a constant dialogue—at times lyrical and yearning, at others fiery and urgent. Sweeping lines and bold harmonies showcase Kodály’s deep understanding of both instruments, creating a dynamic and emotionally charged opening that sets the stage for the duo’s compelling journey.

Recognized by industry leaders and top performing arts institutions, Chamber Music | OC’s Pre-College Program is the only pre-professional classical music training program of its kind in Southern California. Open to promising young musicians between the ages of 10 and 18, Pre- College participants will join Chamber Music | OC’s vast professional network of performers, educators, and community advocates while developing essential skill sets guaranteed to bring success both on and off the concert hall stage.

With four separate curriculum tracks, Pre-College participants curate the experience that best fits their needs and schedules. For questions or for more information, please visit chambermusicoc.org/pre-college.

I. Moderato assai

Approximate Duration: 0:11

Program Notes: Smetana’s Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 15 is a passionate and deeply personal work, written in memory of his daughter. The first movement, Moderato assai, begins with an impassioned violin theme, its dramatic leaps and somber tone setting a mood of grief and intensity. The cello and piano weave around this motif, creating a dialogue of urgency and sorrow. Sweeping arpeggios and bold harmonic shifts add to the movement’s restless energy, balancing lyrical expression with moments of stormy turbulence. Through this powerful opening, Smetana blends raw emotion with masterful craftsmanship, making the trio a profound statement of loss and resilience.

Recognized by industry leaders and top performing arts institutions, Chamber Music | OC’s Pre-College Program is the only pre-professional classical music training program of its kind in Southern California. Open to promising young musicians between the ages of 10 and 18, Pre- College participants will join Chamber Music | OC’s vast professional network of performers, educators, and community advocates while developing essential skill sets guaranteed to bring success both on and off the concert hall stage.

With four separate curriculum tracks, Pre-College participants curate the experience that best fits their needs and schedules. For questions or for more information, please visit chambermusicoc.org/pre-college.