(Fun in-person interview and ensuing article for West Newsmagazine)
Countless people have no idea what their profession may include until they are well into their teen years and beyond. Others are never really sure. That was not the case for current Ballwin resident Dr. Philip A. Woodmore.
“My mother (Alma) said she knew I would be a music influencer or at least a music lover,” Woodmore said. “She knew this because even in the womb I would only be awake when choirs were singing or music was playing. As a toddler, I would crawl to the piano, pull myself up and bang on the keys. So, I took piano lessons at the age of 5.”
The piano remained Woodmore’s instrument through Ellisville and Kehr’s Mill elementary schools and Crestview Middle. Prior to his 2000 graduation from Marquette High, he sang in choirs and handled piano accompaniment for all musicals under theater teacher Judi Greene. Woodmore even helped direct music there for about 13 years until Greene retired.
Woodmore earned a marketing degree from Saint Louis University, but found that he was bored in that sphere from the outset. As a sophomore, he auditioned for the university’s Music School and double majored in marketing and music. As an undergraduate in 2005, he was offered a teaching job. In the years that followed he has taught choir in Ferguson and Berkeley middle schools, and started his master’s in music education at Webster University.
“I feel like I stumbled into teaching. Judi always told me I’d be a teacher and I’d laugh at her. But when I was offered a teaching job, it was like, ‘OK, I’ll try this out, and it’s a steady paycheck.’ I fell in love with education in the first month. Middle school became my thing. It was just the age I connected with as an educator.”
Woodmore noted psychological changes kids go through at this age as beginning performers with no control over what’s happening to their voices. He also helped in other aspects of adolescence with an emphasis on teaching his students to be good citizens.
He proudly revived those two fledgling middle school programs through a battle of the choirs that drew 500 people to the community event.
Next was a job at Crestview Middle starting in 2006. He built that music program from 225 kids to 350. He was also involved with Stephanie Riven at COCA (Center of Creative Arts), helping the theater music program and later was coordinator of their voice program, wrote the curriculum for their music program and directed their shows. It turned into a second full-time job.
Philip A. Woodmore directing the 'Antigone in Ferguson' mass choir during a performance in Brooklyn, NY...Gregg Richards photo
“In August 2016, I got a phone call from a gentleman in New York named Bryan Doerries. He wanted me to put together a project in St. Louis to help us heal after the rioting and everything following the murder of Michael Brown in 2014. He wanted me to get a choir together to perform this project he called ‘Antigone in Ferguson,’ a likeness of ‘Antigone’ from Sophocles in Greek mythology. His concept was to bring it to a space, do it in art form, then have a community conversation. He wanted the choir that was doing that to be stakeholders in the community, including police officers because there was a lot of tension between police and the community.”
Doerries contacted Woodmore because he had directed the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Choir, the performing group of COCA, a voice studio and a similar work at the church of his father, pastor Willie Woodmore.
When Woodmore was told the show was going to be on Sept. 17, he thought it was the following year; not just 45 days later. But the shortened schedule did not deter him.
Woodmore became composer, original music director and arranger for the show. He was excited for it to be performed in St. Louis but never dreamed of the life it would take on.
After premiering here, he was asked to take it on a two-year national tour plus a performance in Athens, Greece. The show then got picked up Off Broadway in New York for two years. Unfortunately, he was forced to pull out of teaching in 2017 to manage the show full-time.
Woodmore spent roughly half the year in New York. The show made a run at the Kennedy Center in D.C. then moved to Baltimore. The company was set to leave for Virginia when the pandemic hit and all ensuing performances were canceled.
He went from a large body of work with a nice income to no work and no income. He wasn’t in a position to collect unemployment, and had no work engagements. He started soul searching, and began an online voice studio. He recruited 38 students in about the first week.
“My big savior was a phone call from Rebecca Messbarger, a professor at Wash U. She wanted to put together a memorial service for the city of St. Louis for everybody who has died from COVID. She studies pandemics and said one of the major issues why we can’t move on as a society is we don’t pause to mourn. She was adamant about this, raised all this money, brought me on the team as the artistic director; and I wrote all the music for the event in St. Louis this past October.”
The memorial included 1,800 lanterns in the Grand Basin in Forest Park to honor over 4,000 people who died from COVID. A recent lantern lighting ceremony was held there on April 23.
Woodmore said getting involved in that project and working on something that impacts the community revived his creative energies.
He has written several plays, including “The Drum Major Instinct” (about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), “Frederick Douglass,” and a children’s play titled “Growing Pains,” performed as a workshop. He is currently writing “Team M” and hoping for a 2023 St. Louis premiere. He also lectures around the country on how music brings people together like a universal language and creates a safe space.
Another Woodmore project is a script for a production tied to mental health, particularly in the black community where the subject isn’t talked about as much.
Through it all, there’s one thing nearly all of Woodmore’s projects have in common: passion.
“As a child, I didn’t know what I liked about music. It was just in my fibers. In high school, I thought singing was just a pastime. To be able to build a career from music and offer that to a community in a thoughtful and powerful way is amazing.
“Music is my passion. It’s what I was doing when I was 5 and what I’m still doing at age 40.”
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