Phil Woods’ “Children’s Suite”

This year COTA will celebrate its 30th Festival, and Phil and I thought it was a great time to do something special.

[And this was even before we knew what a special year it would be for Phil himself. In 2007, he was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master (America’s Highest Honor in Jazz) and then received the President’s Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARA), the organization which confers the Grammy Awards.]

We decided to pursue a project that was begun in the ’60s – Phil’s “Children’s Suite”.
As Phil wrote to the President of NARA:

"Part of our local (COTA) program includes the best local high-school musicians recommended by their teachers for a big band that performs at the COTA Festival. Next year will be the 25th anniversary of this ensemble that we call COTA Cats…. We commission special pieces for the band geared toward their particular strengths. Local pros and COTA Alums mentor the kids through the intensive week-long rehearsals that precede the event (always held on the week-end after Labor Day, in case you are in the neighborhood!) The Celebration of the Arts also fields over 23 Northeast PA bands over the weekend event, featuring the likes of Urbie Green, David Liebman and yours truly, all local folks. We all get a little over union scale and any profits accrued go to worthy community groups, like our local museum, church, and volunteer fire department.

Rick and I have always wanted to expand this program to one similar to the Ramblerny Performing Arts Camp, and this year we are going to give it a shot. We’re going to utilize my Little Big Band (6 horns, 2 vocalists, and rhythm) to rehearse a piece I composed back in the ’60s – in fact it was premiered at Ramblerny! Called the “Children’s Suite”, it was inspired by A. A. Milne’s Now We Are Six collection of poems. But I hit a bump in the road when the Disney Corporation said to cease and desist from further performances because they owned the rights to all of Milne’s Winnie the Pooh literature. So the piece became a family affair that my kids and I would perform at holiday time.

Fast-forward 40 years, when I ran into English actor/friend Peter Dennis, who is a close friend of the Milne family and is the only person permitted to perform the Milne works with orchestras. And he is a big jazz fan! I told him my problem and, to make a long story short, through his efforts I now have permission to record this piece as a CD and to produce a documentary DVD of rehearsals and all the other work involved in performing and staging this work.

“Children’s Suite” rehearsals will be the centerpiece of the first COTA Camp Jazz this August. We hope to have six combos, and they will attend all rehearsals as part of the Camp (in addition to improvisation classes, field trips etc.)"

Following this week of rehearsals, the “Children’s Suite” will be recorded for CD, and then it leaps to the stage: The “Children’s Suite” will be premiered live as the lead-off special event for the 30th Annual Delaware Water Gap Celebration of the Arts on Thursday, September 6th, at the Sherman Theater in downtown Stroudsburg. This will be a full, theatrically staged event, with sets, props, and lighting adding to the magic of Phil’s music set to the poems of Now We Are Six. And, yes, we have youth! Local young musicians and talented children alike will join the world-class musicians of Phil’s band to bring to life the stories created by A. A. Milne. A videotape of this performance will be at the heart of the planned DVD that will document the evolution of this charming and instructive work of art.

All profits from the sale of the “Children’s Suite” CD and DVD will be donated to PATH (Pocono Area Transitional Housing). PATH is a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit corporation founded by Church Women United, local business leaders, and community members. The purpose of PATH is to organize and operate housing with related services for the care and relief of families with children in a housing crisis in Monroe County.

The founders, faculty, and supporters of the COTA CampJazz project and the “Children’s Suite” production are fully committed to PATH, believing that the precious children temporarily residing in PATH housing fully deserve a new chance to find safety, security, and cultural enrichment within a caring community.