James Wood (musician)

During his time with NLCC he pioneered a large amount of little-known choral music from a wide range of composers, including Iannis Xenakis, Tona Scherchen, Toru Takemitsu, Eric Bergman, Harrison Birtwistle, Lili Boulanger, Ruth Crawford, Luigi Dallapiccola, Frank Denyer, György Kurtág, György Ligeti, Almeida Prado, Giacinto Scelsi, Alfred Schnittke, Claude Vivier, Walter Zimmermann and Wood himself.

He was also responsible for the commissioning many new works (many of which included electronics) from composers including Jonathan Harvey (Forms of Emptiness, Ashes Dance Back, The Summer Cloud’s Awakening), Alejandro Vinao (Epitafios), Javier Alvarez (Calacas Imaginarias), Iannis Xenakis (Knephas), Luca Francesconi (Let me Bleed), Simon Bainbridge (Eicha), Roberto Sierra (Cantos Populares) and David Sawer (Stramm Gedichte).

With NLCC Wood undertook numerous CD recordings, many of which were world premiere recordings: these included music by Eric Bergman (Chandos), Lili Boulanger (Hyperion),[1] Ruth Crawford Seeger (Deutsche Grammophon),[2] Giacinto Scelsi (Una Corda),[3] Frank Denyer (Continuum),[4] Iannis Xenakis (Hyperion)[5] and James Wood himself.

In this capacity he was noticed by the new director of the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Friedrich Ferdinand Hommel, who invited him to succeed Christoph Caskel as Professor of Percussion from 1982.

One of Friedrich Hommel’s principal aims as Director of the Darmstädter Ferienkurse had always been to establish the courses as a centre for the rapidly evolving world of percussion.

To this end he commissioned Wood to write a large-scale work for percussion ensemble which would make full use of the large number of talented young percussionists from all over the world who were coming to Darmstadt for the summer courses.

Festivals, the ensemble 'Critical Band' undertook several recordings, concerts and tours, including a CD of three of Wood's own compositions: Venancio Mbande talking with the Trees, Phainomena and Two men meet, each presuming the other to be from a distant planet.

Ever conscious of the fact that electronic music provided a perfect medium in which to explore his love for both microtonality and new sounds, Wood decided to immerse himself more fully in this world, and in 1996 undertook a major project at IRCAM in Paris.

Notable performances include Luigi Nono’s Caminantes Ayacucho with the Netherlands Radio Choir and Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra at the 2008 Holland Festival; his training of the Vienna State Opera Chorus for Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore at the 2009 Salzburg Festival, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher; the first ever performance with live pianolist (Rex Lawson) of Theo Verbey’s completion of Stravinsky’s 1919 version Les Noces with musikFabrik and RIAS Kammerchor at the Berlin Philharmonie in 2013; and the German premiere of Wood's own Tongues of Fire (for large chorus and percussion quartet) with the MDR Rundfunkchor in Leipzig in November 2014.

Following a joint commission from the Dutch Ensemble, Insomnio, the Stichting De Vrede van Utrecht and the Eduard Van Beinum Stichting, Wood then undertook a collaboration with the writer, Paul Griffiths and the director, Sybille Wilson on the opera, Gulliver, based on Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – a project which lasted three years, from 2011 until 2014.