From swing to current tunes, Dick Goodwin Big Band plays it all

The Dick Goodwin Big Band will kick off The Arts Council’s 2005-2006 season on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 7:30 p.m. The Dick Goodwin Big Band will open The Arts

Council’s 2005-2006 season on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 7:30 p.m.

The band has a huge and incredibly versatile repertoire – from “the new swing” to current tunes, old time rock, shag and beach music, originals by members of the group, and traditional big band numbers from the Sinatra era. The band has worked with Bob Hope, Marian McPartland, Teddy Wilson, Johnny Mathis, the Guy Lombardo and Tommy Doresey orchestras, Henry Mancini, The Temptations, Barbara Eden and Natalie Cole.

“I used to wear two hats – ‘Gordon Goodwin’ for my classical work and ‘Dick Goodwin’ for the after-hours jazz character.”

Over the years (under one hat or the other), Goodwin has written hundreds of works, from jingle to opera, jazz band to symphony orchestra.

“I grew up in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and El Paso, Texas, and had decided at a very early age that music would be my life’s work. What attracted me was orchestration, composition and recording. As I was graduating in music theory and composition from the University of Texas, the faculty encouraged me to finish the doctorate and take a teaching position there. I found that I loved teaching and I have had a successful run of it. But I now have the time (and still have the energy) to concentrate full-time on my first love – composing, arranging, producing and performing.

Gordon (Dick) Goodwin (the composer) is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina where he still teaches a handful of doctoral students. He was a recipient of USC’s prestigious Educational Foundation Award, is the 2001 Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Individual Artist winner (the highest honor awarded in the arts by the State of South Carolina). And he has received a number of writer awards from ASCAP (American Society of Composers and Publishers.)

Prior to coming to the University of South Carolina, he taught composition and theory and ran the jazz program (which he initiated) at the University of Texas. Before that he spent four long years as a band director in the U.S. Coast Guard.

Dick Goodwin (the jazz juy) is a compose /arranger/performer/ studio producer. He leads the Dick Goodwin Quintet and Dick Goodwin Big Band.

The Dick Goodwin Big Band has performed at major social events in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and Virginia and has been featured in concert with area orchestras.

The players are Jim Hall (drums), Dwight Spencer (guitar), Terry Trentham (bass), Doug Graham (clarinet and saxophones), Kevin Jones (saxophones and trombone), Charlie Polk and Dave Allison (trumpets), Bruce Clark, Ashley Fleshman, and Ed Craft (trombones), and John Wilkinson and Kristi Hood (vocalists). They perform regularly with the S.C. Philharmonic, the USC Conductors Institute Orchestra and the Palmetto Brass.