On Thursday evening, February 27, 2020, the Ellis Performing Arts Center in Latta will come alive with music from Winkie and Dick Goodwin and Tony Lee and Friends.
Winifred Bryant Goodwin (Winkie Bryant) grew up in Latta, South Carolina, where she studied music and piano with Miss Elizabeth Dew. She is in demand as a chamber musician, orchestral player, and collaborative pianist. She has been the principle keyboardist with the South Carolina Philharmonic Orchestra since 1982, performing on piano, celesta, harpsichord, and synthesizer. She has been a featured soloist on a number of programs, including over four hundred performances of Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. In addition to the standard repertory, Mrs. Goodwin specializes in new music and has premiered many works including several by composer/husband Gordon (Dick) Goodwin. She holds two degrees in piano performance from the University of South Carolina where she serves as staff pianist in the School of Music Winkie also serves as pianist for Virginia Wingard Memorial United Methodist Church in Columbia.
Gordon (Dick) Goodwin came to the University of South Carolina to start a doctoral program in composition, to head the theory-composition-history area, and to arrange music for the Carolina Band. He also directed the University Symphony for a number of seasons. He was a recipient of the prestigious USC Educational Foundation Award and is the 2001 Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Individual Artist winner (the highest honor awarded in the arts by the State of South Carolina). He was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus in 1999. Gordon received his doctorate from the University of Texas where he directed the Jazz program (which he initiated) and taught theory and composition. He also served four years as a band director in the U.S. Coast Guard. Dr. Goodwin’s works in virtually every idiom from jingle to opera, jazz band to orchestra, have been performed across the U.S. and abroad. He leads the Dick Goodwin Big Band and the Dick Goodwin Quintet (which has made a dozen foreign concert tours) and has written and produced many film scores, commercials, and albums at GEM Recordings in Columbia. Dick is a Yamaha trumpet artist.
Tony Lee, Latta High School graduate, is the owner and operator of Freeway Music in five locations in the Columbia area. His playing career began, as he tells it, “in the smallest of towns in South Carolina’s Pee Dee region of Floydale”. He decided that he wanted to be a drummer when he was ten years old, after watching his first Christmas parade in Latta. He threw himself in marching percussion in high school and eventually became the first Percussion Captain for the Drum & Bugle Corps Carolina Crown in 1990, as well as marching all four years of his undergraduate career with the WAD Squad at the University of South Carolina. In the 90’s, Tony toured with Treadmill Trackstar, a nationally signed rock band. In 2000, he started playing jazz.
One of the “Friends” that Tony will bring to the Ellis Performing Arts Center is Amos Hoffman, an Israeli-born Jazz Guitarist and Oudist who is worldwide known as a pioneer in fusing the rhythms and melodic themes of the Middle East with Modern Jazz. Hoffman started playing guitar at the age of 6 and oud a few years later. He studied guitar privately, and later attended the prestigious Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. After that, he came to New York City where he played jazz with both established musicians and up and coming talents like Jason Lindler, bassists and fellow Israelis Omer Avital and Avishai Cohen, and Chilean vocalist Claudia Acuna. Hoffman has recorded 4 solo albums, “The Dreamer” (1999), “Na’ama” (2006), “Evolution” (2008), and “Carving” (2010).
Sam Edwards, another of the “Friends,” is an up and coming Columbia bassist who earned his degree in Jazz Studies from the University of South Carolina under Craig Butterfield. Sam routinely plays with world-class musicians along the east coast of the United States. Sam has performed with Columbia talent such as Ross Holmes, Mark Rapp, Robert Gardiner, Amos Hoffman, Skipp Pearson, and Dick Goodwin. He has also performed with jazz artists such as Ashlin Parker, Ron Westray, and New York cabaret singer Carole J. Bufford. In addition to jazz, Sam has played with USC classical wind ensembles, as well as the Town Theatre.
“Friend” Nick Brewer, keyboardist, is easily one of the most well-known musicians around Columbia, SC, and one of the most interesting in character, attitude, and artistry. Nick is a great musician and is comfortable in a myriad of styles from straight-ahead modern jazz, traditional jazz to hard-core rock, and even pop music. Nick grew up all over the world as the son of a military officer. When he was 11, his piano teacher, Mildred Dexter, bought Nick a cassette tape of Peter Nero playing Broadway tunes. He played that tape so much that his parents moved his piano and Nick’s bedroom to the basement where he could play all hours of the day. Skipp Pearson, Reggie Sullivan, and Robert Gardiner are the local mentors that have given Brewer encouragement and a job!
Because of Tony’s desire to give back to his Alma Mater, Tony Lee and Friends will arrive early on February 27 so that they can work with and perform for students at Latta High School.
CareSouth-Carolina, our local community health center that delivers a comprehensive set of services from pediatrics to pharmacy to community outreach, has graciously offered to sponsor this event. Therefore, there will be no charge. Seating will be by reservation, so please call 843-752-7101, Ext. 1017 to reserve your seats for ”An Evening of Jazz”, featuring Winkie and Dick Goodwin, and Tony Lee and Friends, at the Ellis Performing Arts Center in Latta on February 27 at 6:30 p.m.