Seth Parker Woods

Seth Parker Woods seeks to find new roles for the cello in his diverse performing career. His repertory involves classical music from the Baroque to the present day, and he has embarked on a wide range of collaborative projects in Europe as well as in his native U.S. Parker Woods was born in Houston in 1984. His father was a gospel and jazz singer, and he remembers hearing his father's groups rehearse in the basement of the family home. Another formative experience came when the young Parker Woods saw the film The Witches of Eastwick, which features a cello that bursts into flames. Fascinated, Parker Woods began taking lessons and made rapid progress. He attended the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, also the alma mater of R&B star Beyoncé. Parker Woods was accepted into a preparatory program at the Juilliard School in New York, studying with André Emilianoff. He then earned a bachelor's degree at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, where his principal teacher was Frederick Zlotkin, principal cellist at the New York City Ballet. Parker Woods stayed on in New York, investigating ways to cross the line between classical and pop music. He toured with such artists as Peter Gabriel, Lady Gaga, and Adele and was a substitute with the Orchestra of St. Luke's. With help from composer Patrick Soluri, Parker Woods moved to Europe, playing for a time with the Staatsballett Orchestra in Berlin. He collaborated with choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and held a residency at the Centre Intermondes in La Rochelle, France, collaborating with various artists along the way. Parker Woods wrote to the experimentalist composer and cellist Thomas Demenga and studied with him. At the University of Huddersfield in Britain, he completed a PhD thesis entitled Almost Human: The study of physical processes and the performance of a prosthetic spine. He performed with the Ictus Ensemble in Belgium and with experimental trombonist, composer, and Karlheinz Stockhausen student Mike Svoboda in Switzerland. Under these influences, Parker Woods released his debut album, asinglewordisnotenough, on the Confront Recordings label in London. The album featured premiere recordings of works by Michael Clarke, Edward Hamel, George Lewis, and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, three of which were composed for Parker Woods. He has continued to perform in both Europe and the U.S., playing the premieres of contemporary works by Anna Thorvaldsdottir and others, performing Baroque cello pieces that he studied with cellist Elinor Frey, and devising interdisciplinary pieces like ICED BODIES, which owed inspiration to the Fluxus movement of the 1960s. In 2023, Parker Woods released the album Difficult Grace on the Cedille Records label; that album earned a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Instrumental Performance.
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