In America, Mitch Woods is considered one of the best modern players of traditional musical forms such as blues, rock & roll, boogie and jive. His album, recorded at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, was nominated for Best Live Blues Recording at the 2019 Blues Blast Music Awards. He was also nominated for a Living Blues Award for Best Keyboard Player.
Mitch Woods is a New Yorker who started playing classical music at 11 before moving on to blues and its derivative genres. He is a singer with a warm voice and a pianist with brilliant technique and a magnificent musical vision. He already showed these skills at the previous edition of Umbria Jazz.
With his historic band, the Rocket 88’s, formed in 1980, Mitch performed first in the Northern California club circuit before soon becoming successful at the federal level.
Significant figures of American music history are Mitch’s reference models: Fats Domino (his latest album was dedicated to his music), the pioneers of boogie-woogie piano such as Meade Lux Lewis, the great New Orleans pianists like Professor Longhair, and Louis Jordan, who represented the meeting point of swing and rock & roll.
According to Keyboard Magazine, “Woods lays down an authentic 50s-vintage rock piano groove, comparable in power and rhythmic nuance to classic recordings by the young Jerry Lee Lewis”.