The Mark Wood Experience formed around Mark Wood, an American electric violinist born in Port Washington, New York, who first made his name reinventing the instrument itself. In 1968, at the age of 12, Mark developed the first solid body electric violin, at a time when there wasn't a remotely comparable instrument on the general market. After training at Juilliard, where he studied under Dr. Richard Rusack and later worked with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood, Wood built a reputation as a genre bending instrumentalist. He eventually assembled a touring outfit around his solo recordings, accompanied by "The Mark Wood Experience" consisting of one member of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, his wife Laura Kaye, and his child Elijah Wood on drums, along with several other musicians. The band's early style fused hard rock and heavy metal energy with symphonic and classical instrumentation, built entirely around Wood's electrified string work.
Wood's breakthrough came well before the Experience took shape, when he became the original string master of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra , an association that made him internationally known. Wood rose to fame as string master and original member of the internationally acclaimed Trans-Siberian Orchestra, selling over 10 million albums during his time with them. By his own account, for over 15 years he was involved with catapulting that band into multi-platinum status, performing multiple concerts daily in arena sized venues for 30,000-plus people. Riding that momentum, he launched a solo recording career, ultimately releasing seven solo albums, and touring with his band The Mark Wood Experience, which features his partner, vocalist Laura Kaye. Wood's chart profile stayed rooted in his instrumental catalog, including the record Voodoo Violince, which solidified his position as "the world's first heavy metal violinist," with liner notes proudly proclaiming "There are no guitars on this record." Over the following decades Wood expanded his career well beyond the road, layering awards, collaborations, and business ventures onto his performing life. Wood received an Emmy award for the music of CBS-TV's coverage of the 2002 Tour de France, and he also composed a piece for electric string quartet commissioned by the Juilliard School entitled Nest of Vipers. His resume of collaborators grew to include some of the biggest names in music, and Wood has collaborated with and appeared alongside artists such as Billy Joel, Celine Dion, and Lenny Kravitz, even performing with Billy Joel for both historic final concerts at Shea Stadium, sharing the stage with Paul McCartney, Steven Tyler, and Roger Daltrey. Alongside the music, he built Wood Violins into the premier manufacturer of electric violins, violas and cellos worldwide, holding the patent for the first-ever self-supporting violin. Dee Snider even created a project with him in mind, as Dee Snider of Twisted Sister fame created "Van Helsing's Curse" specifically with Wood in mind to be the electric string master of that stage extravaganza. Today Mark Wood remains active, touring under expanded banners such as the Mark Wood Trans-Siberian Symphony Experience, which brings his TSO era hits and original compositions to symphony orchestras nationwide. In addition to Electrify Your Strings, Wood and his family run the annual MWROC Music Festival, a week-long music camp, as well as the Mark Wood Electrify Your Music Foundation, a 501-C3 dedicated to supporting music and the arts. His influence is felt as much in music education as in performance, since with hundreds of thousands of students reached, millions of dollars raised to help high school music departments across the US, and dozens of school orchestra programs saved from the chopping block, Mark Wood has proven himself a man of ideas, action and results. His legacy as an innovator of the electric violin, paired with his ongoing touring and educational work, has cemented his reputation as one of the instrument's defining modern voices.
For this archive, the Mark Wood Experience holds a modest but meaningful place. Wayne Dennon photographed the band at a single show back in 2007, capturing the raw energy of Wood's violin driven rock spectacle for a moment in time. That night lives on through 50 photographs preserved in the collection, images that visitors have returned to again and again, racking up 37,128 views over the years. It stands as a small but treasured piece of Wayne's larger body of work, a reminder of the nights he spent behind the lens documenting the electrified, boundary pushing sound of Mark Wood and his band.
