Colin Woodford is a composer, improviser, drummer, bandleader, and mix engineer from Los Angeles. He plays most regularly with modern jazz band ‘Chord Four,’ who played the summer and winter 2017 Umbria Jazz Festivals as winners of the first international Conad Jazz Competition, and the singer-songwriter trio ‘Toh Kay’ with Tomas Kalnoky, which has toured the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Solo projects have included a solo amplified cymbal improvisation, a house concert where the house is the instrument, a web series of ‘other drum solos,’ and the solo drum record ‘Rectangle Music.’ As a composer and improviser, he has written for a wide array of ensembles from string quartet to big band to solo saxophone, and the stated goal is always more compassion and more freedom. He has a BFA from CalArts and an MM from UNLV, where he won a Downbeat Magazine Outstanding Performance Award in 2016. He is an active educator including individual and ensemble work, lectures on improvisation and recording acoustic music, and published articles in Modern Drummer magazine. Projects as a bandleader include ‘Human-Sized Music’ for horn octet, ‘Practical Compassion’ for mixed ensembles, ‘Field Notes’ for piano trio, a project with Minnesota-based writer Emma August Welter called ‘Haikullages,’ and the recently released quintet record called ‘Life Happens Anyways’.