Mark Wood came to Rocky Heights Middle School in Douglas County tonight, September 13,and captivated the audience with his unique musical style, which is played on a unique musical instrument he designed and built himself.

Mark Wood designs, makes and plays electric stringed instruments that are part violin, part cello, part guitar and all wow. His rendition of rock and fiddle classics such as the Beatles ' Eleanor Rigby and Charlie Daniels' The Devil Went Down to Georgia brought students to their feet.

Mark Wood, with his Eddie Van Halenhair and funky style, is on a personal mission to "change all the rules", to quote him, as the rules seem to have always applied to cello and violin. He found as a young student at The Juilliard School in New York he was limited in his musical expression by not only the design of his instruments but by traditional thinking about them. In short, he saw no reason one could not express the depths of his rock and roll soul on violin or cello, and set about to do just that. His first obstacle: Locating a stringed instrument that offered the range and versatility needed to carry him and his listeners to rock and roll heaven.

Enter Mark Wood, designer and maker of Wood Violins.

Mark Wood explained he was raised in a musical family. His inspiration began there, he said. His life has been a journey of music right from the start. He shared with the audience he is proud his life's work has combined the influences and talents of both his mother, a musician, and his father, a wood worker.

Mark has led bands, written countless pieces of music for his own performance, for other musicians and for commercial reasons such as advertisements. In fact, he showed the audience a recently filmed Pepsi commercial featuring Mark as "the devil" playing his electric violin in a wild dual with a young female fiddle player. I won't tell you how the commercial ends. I'll only say smoke, disintegrating strings, flames and explosions are involved. We can expect the commercial in our area soon.

Now Mark Wood plans to crisscross the nation visiting schools and inspiring music students to think outside the box-- and maybe even toss the box out. Based on the reactions of students Sept. 13, no doubt in my mind he'll succeed.

For more information about Mark Wood, his company, his music, his music programs, go to his website at www.woodviolins.com.