Joseph R. Wood

Joseph Wood (12 May 1915 – 3 June 2000) was an American composer and music educator.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wood attended Bucknell University from 1932-1934. Afterwards, he began his formal music training at the Juilliard Institute of Musical Arts where he received a diploma in piano performance in 1936. Impressed with his work, the Juilliard School offered him a full four-year Juilliard fellowship from 1936-40. He continued his piano studies with Bernard Wagenear, completing his bachelor's degree in 1949. In 1942 he won first prize for his opera The Mother in the Juilliard Opera Competition. On the basis of winning the opera prize he was given a Ditson Award from Columbia University, on which he lived and wrote music for a year. He went on to study composition with Otto Luening at Columbia University. He graduated with a M.A. in music composition in 1950.

During his time at Juilliard, Wood would periodically take time off from school to pursue other interests. He was the staff composer at the Chekov Theatre Studio in Manhattan from 1939-1941 where he wrote a wide variety of scores for many productions directed by Michael Chekhov. He also worked as a freelance composer and arranger in New York City from 1941–1943 and from 1946-1950. During this time period Wood was primarily working as a composer for radio and television commercials, writing many of the tunes Madison Avenue used to sell everything from soap to television dramas. He wrote charts for many dance bands, the most famous of which was his arrangement of "Chiquita Banana" that he did for Xavier Cugat. He also wrote many of the orchestral arrangements used for the first Muzak recordings.

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