Let your inner Rock Star come out with a vengeance!  

Mark Wood’s electric Viper violins are now available through West Music. These incredible, unique instruments are of the highest quality in construction, detail and sound.

The possibilities are as limitless as your imagination while playing on these beautiful violins. The Vipers literally “Stand Alone,” being suspended from the body with a special ergonomic strap and arm system – this makes a traditional chin and shoulder rest unnecessary – Revolutionary!  

Customize your finishes, hardware and pickup options! More models including the Stingray SV-4 violin and the Cobra cello coming to a West Music location near you soon!

Mark Wood will be visiting schools in the Quad Cities in May 2010. We'll post details as they become available!

About Mark Wood
(Formerly of Trans-Siberian Orchestra)

“I am a violin player. I love the instrument. I love the feel and sound every time my bow crosses the strings and how the violin sings with a sensuous voice and incredible expressiveness. I believe it also has the capacity to produce the raw power of aggressive sounds and machine gun articulations. When I first started playing electric years ago, there was nothing out there that was cool, sleek and hip. This is why I designed instruments that make audience’s jaws drop and provide me with a passionate and emotional experience as a musician. Through these instruments, I hope to share my vision for a more adventurous and musically satisfying experience on the violin. I hope they provide the same level of excitement for you.” (MARK WOOD, Owner & Operator of Wood Violins)

Mark Wood is a music educator and is available for tours and school appearances. Visit the Electrify Your Strings!™ website for more.

It seems that Mark Wood's passion for music and artistic innovation goes back to birth. His father is a professional artist/sculptor and his mother is an accomplished concert pianist. Mark also has three brothers who are professional string players and educators as well. In fact, the brothers often played together in public, billing themselves as "The Wood String Quartet."

Mark's rigorous viola training as a youth led him to first chair positions in school orchestras and the highest standings in state high school string competitions. Along the way Mark received training at the Tanglewood Music School working with maestro Leonard Bernstein and the Boston Symphony and participated in performances at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center at age 15. This training and experience ultimately led to Mark receiving a full scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard School of Music at age 17.

As is quite apparent today, Mark's interest in the viola and violin went well beyond acquiring his prodigious instrumental technique. He has always been deeply interested in the heritage and future of the instruments as well. His music training was supplemented by regular visits to his father's wood shop where he tirelessly experimented with changing the structure and design of the violin. Although Mark's initial goal was simply to update the instrument's design to make it look more "cool," he soon realized that the acoustic violin's sonic beauty is tightly linked to its traditional shape leaving little room for deviation from the basic model.

Mark realized that the design constraints dictated by the acoustic violin could be largely eliminated by electrifying the instrument, which led him to experiment with a wide variety of radically shaped violins that are far better suited to amplified performance in a contemporary music context than the acoustic violin. Thus his company Wood Violins came into being; having built their reputation on the quality of their custom-made hand-built electric violins, WV has often been described as the "Stradivarius of electric violins" and is devoted to manufacturing unique and unusual electric violins for the general public.

Excited about the potential of the electric violin in contemporary music and fueled by his passion for designing newer and better electric violins, Mark devotes full time to following careers in composition, performance, music education, and violin making. Self-sponsored, he has successfully worked in all of these areas and more for over twenty years. (From markwoodmusic.com)