Graham Wood (musician)


Graham Wood was an Australian jazz pianist and educator.

Career

Wood taught jazz piano at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth, Western Australia, in 2001, became head of the jazz department in 2005, and Program Director of Music in 2006.
In 2009, he opened The Ellington Jazz Club in Perth, Western Australia. In its first year, the venue put on 520 shows and featured 2,586 musicians.
Wood was a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia School of Music and completed his thesis in 2010 entitled "Factors affecting the performance wellness of jazz pianists in practice and performance". He presented two papers at the Performing Arts Medicine Association annual conference in Aspen, Colorado.
He received a 2002 commission from the Fremantle International Jazz Festival to compose a one-hour work entitled "Joan".
Wood contracted cholangiocarcinoma, a rare form of bile duct cancer, in 2013. On 19 July 2017, he died of cancer at the age of 45.