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Celine Dion - "It's amazing what he can do with a violin and a bow"
Jay Leno - "Itzhak Perlman pulling his hair out,
ladies and gentlemen!"
CBS News - "You gotta see this guy to believe it!"
Entertainment Tonight - "Incredible musician!"
USA Networks - "We use his music all the time and LOVE IT!"
CBS Sunday Morning - "Moving violin into the future"
Time Magazine - "Funk metal violin at its very best"
Yngwie Malmsteen - "This music is totally different from anything else I've heard! Totally different. When I came around the first time, everybody said 'this is weird.' Yet that's the initial thing to do; something that no one else has done. That's very important. Mark Wood's done that. It's completely nuts! It's great!"
The Professor - WFBG - Altoona, PA - "Not only are his CDs curious listening, they are astounding listening, as Wood breaks acres of new ground . . . I need not say more - listen and discover Mark Wood for yourself . . . [It] is THAT impressive."
Mark Wood's dexterity, ferocity, texture and attack of playing almost invariably lead to comparisons with some of the rock era's most renowned guitarists. Comparisons, however, cannot come close to capturing the electricity, passion, and innovation exhibited in all of his very original music.
In an industry where originality is a highly prized commodity, recording artist, performer, producer, inventor and Emmy-winning composer Mark Wood is truly an original. He began his career with a full scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard School in New York and had the privilege of studying under Maestro Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Program.
Mark starred in a national television ad campaign for Pepsi and worked with Kanye West on a hip hop version of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" (featuring the rapper Nas).
As an electric violinist, Mark Wood is a highly acclaimed international recording artist who has released six CDs of his highly original music, showcasing his unique approach to the electric violin playing on his own line of patented instruments; he has toured and recorded with many of the industry's most prominent performers. In addition to touring with Celine Dion, where he was featured on a duet with her on the song "To Love You More," Mark was also string arranger on two of her records. He was the featured violinist in Billy Joel's video "All About Soul," appeared on "MTV Unplugged" with Lenny Kravitz, and has performed with Everclear in a live special for New York radio station WPLJ-FM. Most recently, The Mark Wood Rock Orchestra opened the 2011 NAMM Show in California, where Mark also performed with Victor Wooten and members of Dream Theater, Shinedown, and Anthrax. NBC’s The Today Show recently aired an extensive feature focusing on Mark’s Electrify Your Strings!™ music education program.
Mark is an original member of the multi-platinum-selling symphonic rock group Trans-Siberian Orchestra, receiving two platinum and three gold records from his work with them, and has performed in front of millions of people with the group since their inception.
Mark was a featured performer with rock icon Billy Joel for the historic "Last Play at Shea" concerts at Shea Stadium in New York in July 2008; and shared the stage with Sir Paul McCartney, Roger Daltry, Steven Tyler, and more.
He is putting finishing touches on his latest solo release and tours with an amazing group of musicians – The Mark Wood Experience features vocalist Laura Kaye, who collaborates with Mark and appears on several of his CDs.
In the capacity of composer, Mark started Mark Wood Music Productions, a company which focuses mainly on creating dramatic and inspirational pieces of music for television and film markets (particularly sports productions, network specials, and commercial spots) and has earned Mark a number of impressive video and audio production credits. He received his first Emmy award for music he composed for CBS-TV’s coverage of the 2002 Tour de France bicycle race, and has received three additional Emmy nominations; for music for the Winter Olympics on CBS-TV and a documentary for ABC-TV; the most recent nomination for music for the 2003 Tour de France. The client list of Mark Wood Music Productions includes many of the major television networks as well as several world famous recording artists. One of Mark’s commissions was from The Juilliard School, who enlisted him to compose a piece for their electric string quartet – “Nest of Vipers” had its world premiere in April 2003 at Lincoln Center in New York City. His concerto for electric violin and orchestra, the 15-minute groundbreaking piece entitled “Innocence to Enlightenment” had its debut in August 2003; and "Viper Vs. Orchestra" premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2007 where Mark was accompanied by the Etowah Youth Orchestra conducted by Michael Gagliardo.
As an inventor, Mark created the first solid body electric violin in the early 1970’s and established Wood Violins, a company whose mission is to make Mark's incredible instruments available to the general public. Mark is known as the “Les Paul of the violin world” (a phrase first coined by PBS) and Wood Violins has established a formidable reputation in the electric string world with its hand-crafted custom instruments, ranging from the 4-string fretless Stingray all the way to the 7-string fretted Viper. The company stands behind its claim to have made the most important change to the violin in 400 years and is often referred to as the “Stradivarius of electric violins.” The brand-new Stingray SV4 and Stingray SV5 are Mark's first production models and are offered along with the Wood electric violin amp and the Wood Wah wah-wah pedal as a complete turnkey experience for the budding electric violinist.
Mark was honored to serve on the board of the American String Teachers Association (ASTA), where he had the opportunity to affect the future of progressive string education in our country on a truly grand scale.
Celebrating its 10th year, Mark’s Electrify Your Strings!™ series of music education programs has become enormously successful and in demand as educators across the country are quickly catching on to the importance of incorporating alternative teaching methods into their curriculum. EYS has really captured the media’s attention and has been featured on NBC-TV’s The Today Show, several national broadcasts of CBS Evening News, along with segments on ABC-TV, NBC-TV, CNN, and many others. Electrify Your Strings!™ has been brought to hundreds of venues in the USA and has reached well over 100,000 string players and raised millions of dollars for orchestra programs since its inception in 2001.
The Mark Wood Rock Orchestra Camp (MWROC), a week-long intensive experience with Mark and his world-class faculty (including Rachel Barton Pine and Eric Gorfain), is in its 2nd year and will be held at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas this summer.
Electrify Your Strings, Mark’s definitive electric violin method book (published by Cherry Lane and distributed by Hal Leonard) is the first in a series of books that Mark is working on and is geared towards students and educators alike.
SOME MARK WOOD HISTORY...
It seems that Mark Wood's passion for music and artistic innovation goes
back to birth. His father is a professional artist/sculptor and his mother is an accomplished
concert pianist. Mark also has three brothers who are professional string players and educators
as well. In fact, the brothers often played together in public, billing themselves as "The
Wood String Quartet."
Mark's rigorous viola training as a youth led him to first chair positions in school orchestras
and the highest standings in state high school string competitions. Along the way Mark received
training at the Tanglewood Music School working with
maestro Leonard Bernstein and the Boston Symphony and
participated in performances at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center at age 15. This training
and experience ultimately led to Mark receiving a full scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard
School of Music at age 17.
As is quite apparent today, Mark's interest in the viola and violin went well beyond acquiring his prodigious instrumental technique. He has always been deeply interested in the heritage and future of the instruments as well. His music training was supplemented by regular visits to his father's wood shop where he tirelessly experimented with changing the structure and design of the violin. Although Mark's initial goal was simply to update the instrument's design to make it look more "cool," he soon realized that the acoustic violin's sonic beauty is tightly linked to its traditional shape leaving little room for deviation from the basic model. Mark realized that the design constraints dictated by the acoustic violin could be largely eliminated by electrifying the instrument, which led him to experiment with a wide variety of radically shaped violins that are far better suited to amplified performance in a contemporary music context than the acoustic violin. Thus his company Wood Violins came into being; having built their reputation on the quality of their custom-made hand-built electric violins, WV has often been described as the "Stradivarius of electric violins" and is devoted to manufacturing unique and unusual electric violins for the general public.
Excited about the potential of the electric violin in contemporary music and fueled by his passion for designing newer and better electric violins, Mark devotes full time to following careers in composition, performance, music education, and violin making. Self-sponsored, he has successfully worked in all of these areas and more for over twenty years.