I'm a repatriated Los Angeles songwriter and composer, having lived in New York from 1986 to 2001.
I began performing at the age of 11. I studied musical comedy and songwriting with Tom Lehrer at UC Santa Cruz. I studied music composition with Bernard Rands and Pauline Oliveros at UC San Diego.
I founded and led several bands including the avant-new-wave Some Philharmonic, the 14-piece new music/jazz ensemble Variety Orchestra and the downtown Popular Music Group.
I've collaborated with numerous songwriters including Van Dyke Parks.
My music straddles an eccentric line between theater, pop and oddball.
DISCOGRAPHY
TOWN & COUNTRY (TBA) -- I'm hard at work on a new CD, a collection of country and not country songs, some of whom are demoed here.
MAINLAND by Joe Moe (TBA 2008) -- I co-produced with Michael Webster and Marc Doten an eclectic mix of originals and covers by this incredible Hawaiian latter-day crooner
VARIETY ORCHESTRA (2004) -- large ensemble post-modern jazz compositions, with tons of great musiciansTHE BRIAN WOODBURY SONGBOOK (2000) -- art pop songs featuring a host of singers, including Jill Sobule, Terre Roche of the Roches, David Yazbek (composer/lyricist of Broadway’s The Full Monty) and Sean Altman of Rockapella. A concert version of this project featured Lisa Loeb.
BRIAN WOODBURY AND HIS POPULAR MUSIC GROUP (1992) -- quirky pop ala XTC, They Might Be Giants
ALL WHITE PEOPLE LOOK ALIKE (1987) -- "The epic, twenty-minute-plus title track bounces feverishly from one musical genre to another, grounded to its theme by an hysterical spoken-word observation on racial politics and other societal absurdities." according to Michael Allen of CD Baby
FORBIDDEN KISS by vocalist Najma Akhtar -- a CD of the classic Indian film songs of S.D. Burman, produced by Chris Rael, for which I did orchestrations.
TV
I wrote the theme song for PEPPER ANN, and co-wrote the theme for TEACHER'S PET, both Saturday morning cartoons on ABC. I was the supervising songwriter on Disney’s BOOK OF POOH and for Jim Henson’s BEAR IN THE BIG BLUE HOUSE, both on the Disney Channel.
THEATER
KILLA VANILLA -- an island surf musical I'm developing with Joe Moe and my wife Elma Mayer. We've had readings at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and at the Academy for New Musical Theatre.
WHERE I'M COMING FROM -- a teen pop musical, in collaboration with Joe Moe
SPACE OPERA -- a musical about a post-Apocalyptic colony on Mars, run by right wing extremists, in collaboration with Joe Moe
MCCARTNEY MEETS BERIO -- an opera fantasy based on an actual encounter between the Beatle and the Italian avant garde maestro in the Swinging London of 1966.
TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED (1992) -- a revue I wrote and performed in collaboration with my
sister, actress/playwright Heather Woodbury.
SPLENDRIX (1989) -- a multi-media theater piece set in a corporate office, in collaboration with Erling Wold, Lynn Murdock, Everett Shock and Bob Adams.
