The late Paul Elwood had a knack for making people think about music differently. A Wichita native, Elwood was a composer, musician, and educator whose creativity delighted those who performed and heard his music. He played the banjo throughout his life – he was the 1986 Kansas State Bluegrass Banjo Champion – and he studied percussion in the classical tradition, performing with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic. He wrote music that blended the sounds of bluegrass, jazz, classical, and experimental avant-garde music, along with other stylistic influences he picked up along the way. His repertoire is a feast for one’s ears. 

Elwood died earlier this year. He leaves behind a body of intellectual, innovative, and eclectic music as well as a significant community of friends and collaborators. Many will gather in Wichita at Fisch Haus on Sunday, October 12, at 3 pm to honor Elwood’s life by performing a selection of his musical works and remembering his friendship. 

One look through Elwood’s list of compositions will intrigue anyone – the breadth and variety of instruments he wrote for in combinations rarely or never before heard is astonishing. Longtime friend Dan Rouser described Elwood as having “no use for artificial barriers” when it came to musical genre or style, and this fluidity is evident in his musical output. 

Although the memorial concert focuses on Elwood’s later works, the program will also reflect earlier influences. At Wichita State, he studied percussion with J. C. Combs and composition with Walter Hays, two legendary figures in the Wichita classical music scene. By all accounts, this time was a period of great creativity for Elwood. For someone who thought outside the box, WSU was the ideal place to grow as a musician. Many featured on the concert met Elwood during this time, including Susan Mayo (who initially moved to Wichita to study at the school’s acclaimed music department), Daniel Moore, and Kelly Werts, as well as Rouser, who will offer the opening remarks. 

Elwood’s friends recall this time with pleasure. Mayo, Rouser, and Werts shared memories of the way Elwood gathered them together when he was in Wichita to jam and try out new musical ideas. He founded the Wichita New Music Ensemble and continued to write for both this ensemble and his friends. 

The memorial concert opens with “Well, Maybe I Did,” written in 2007 for a small percussion ensemble of two marimbas, vibraphone, and drumset, performed by current WSU percussion professor Jerry Scholl and four of his students. The marimba also will be featured in two movements from “Prelude to the Blue and Perfumed Abyss,” commissioned in 1994 by Moore, a friend from Elwood’s WSU days. Now the percussion professor at the University of Iowa, Moore will perform the piece at the concert. 

In addition to his percussion background, the concert will feature Elwood’s unconventional style of bluegrass. As WSU students, Elwood and Werts, along with multi-instrumentalist Karen Boggs (now Karen Crowson), formed an experimental bluegrass band called The Sons of Rayon. Later, Elwood played in a psychedelic bluegrass trio called the Prairie Pranksters. Elwood’s music is without a doubt heavily rooted in traditional bluegrass, but there’s much more going on here, too. It’s a joy to listen to.

Original songs, including Sons of Rayon favorite “UFOs Over New Zealand,” will appear on the memorial concert; we will hear this early song performed in conjunction with more recent folk-like songs “Alien Trees” and “Sisiphus” that Elwood recorded with Werts about four years ago for the album “Being, Boing.” This set of songs features the largest group of musicians on the concert, bringing together many of Elwood’s collaborators. 

Later in life, Elwood formed a band aptly called Multifarious that is perhaps most accurately described as a jazz trio but that really brings together musical influences from throughout his life. Elwood, longtime collaborator Mayo, and new friend Sue McKenzie, a virtuosic saxophonist Elwood met in Europe, made up the trio; at the concert, Mayo,  McKenzie, and violinist Tim Snider will perform two of Elwood’s Multifarious tunes. 

The concert will also feature one of Elwood’s graphic scores for indeterminate instrumentation – meaning anyone can perform this piece in any way it speaks to them. Elwood made the score from a map of Kansas in 2019, and it will be interpreted by saxophonist Courtney Long along with a recorded soundscape of Kansas sounds created by Mayo. Another work with Kansas connections is “Punjabi Podcast” for string quartet, which premiered at the Wichita Art Museum in 2017 for an exhibition by Asheer Akram and his Pakistani Cargo Truck.

Some of Elwood’s most beloved and beautiful works are his operas; his short opera “Hedy Lamarr,” composed in 2020 and filmed in 2022, consists of 18 one-minute scenes telling the story of the actress and inventor’s life. Mayo described this favorite among his friends as “incredibly gorgeous.” 

Elwood wrote the program’s final piece, “Kachina,”  to be performed at Mesa Verde National Park for a quartet of musicians, among them himself on banjo and Pueblo flutist Robert Mirabal. “It is a groove tune that everyone likes to riff on, and many of the performers on Sunday have memories of playing it with Paul,” said Mayo. “We will have an open call at the end of the concert for anyone to join in.” 

As I learned about Elwood, I was captivated by his innovative music, but I was deeply moved by what became a recurrent theme in every interview I conducted: He was a true friend, a caring mentor, a treasured collaborator. He excelled at creating community and facilitating new relationships. 

Elwood loved meeting new people and collected friends everywhere he went. When he heard saxophonist Sue McKenzie perform in 2012, he suggested they get together to play sometime – a line musicians often toss out but rarely follow up on. But Elwood meant it, and McKenzie became part of Multifarious. This weekend, she will fly into Wichita from Scotland to perform in his honor. “All of us who have spent time with him are in some way better for it,” she wrote in an email.

Sara Haefeli knew Elwood at the University of Northern Colorado and played in the Prairie Pranksters. “He seemed to know everyone,” she said, “because if he admired someone, he let them know and took the time to build connections.”

Elwood was a lifelong music educator but, according to Werts, he embraced his role as a teacher especially in the latter part of his career. He mentored younger composers including Dylan Fixmer, who said Elwood helped him find his compositional voice. Elwood’s friends spoke of his discipline and intellectual focus, his philosophical nature and sense of fun. This is something he passed on to his peers and to the next generation of composers. 

The concert at Fisch Haus is an invitation for those who knew Elwood to gather and celebrate his life, but it is also an opportunity for those new to his music (like me) to experience it live played by the people who loved him. A “presentation of a wide range of Paul’s personality,” is how Mayo, the driving force behind the event, describes the memorial concert. 

“Listening to Paul’s music is like listening to Paul himself,” said Fixmer. “He had an immutable voice.”

There will be something on the program for every listener — although they may not like every piece, which, by all accounts, Elwood would have been OK with. So much of what I learned about Elwood and his music this past week utterly captivated me, and I am sure that those who are new to his work will feel similarly. And after the concert, there is still much to discover in his repertoire, from a concerto for Velcro tap-dancer and percussion ensemble to a composition based on an auctioneer’s patter.

Kansans, especially Wichitans, will be proud to honor Paul Elwood as one of their own. His music will intrigue and entertain, but his legacy as an all-around good human will be on display as friends and music lovers gather to celebrate his life, and this is likely what will stick with you the most. 

The Details

Paul Elwood Memorial Concert
3 p.m. Sunday, October 12 at Fisch Haus, 524 Commerce St. in Wichita

The concert is free to attend.

View the event program on the Fisch Haus website.

Kate Storhoff is a musicologist whose research focuses on contemporary wind band music. Before moving to Wichita, she managed an independent bookstore and taught at Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She plays the clarinet, piano, and Northumbrian smallpipes.

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