Paul Elwood’s music has been featured at festivals in Moscow, Sofia, Mexico City, Marseille, Wollongong (Australia), Edinburgh, Darmstadt, Madrid (July 2015), Strasbourg, and all over the U.S.A. Performers that have played his music include pianist Stephen Drury, percussionist Stuart Gerber, saxophonist Jon Gudmundson, Zeitgeist, the Callithumpian Consort (Boston), the North Carolina Symphony, the Charleston Symphony, the Wichita Symphony, and Ensemble Signos (Mexico City). Recent recordings are on innova Recordings as composer/banjoist with percussionist Famoudou Don Moye of the Art Ensemble of Chicago (titled Nice Folks, January 2015), Misfit Toys (2013, featuring drummer Matt Wilson, percussionist Dan Moore, and reed player Robert Paredes) and his own chamber and folk music, Stanley Kubrick’s Mountain Home (2011), with bassist Bertram Turetzky (2008), and Electric Cowboy Cacophony (2008).

He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and of the Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France). In 2000 he won the Sigma Alpha-Iota Inter-American Music Awards and was awarded a 2007 commissioning grant from the Jerome Foundation to compose for Zeitgeist. Elwood’s compositions are published by C.F. Peters, Smith Publications, and his own Western Wear Music Publishing.

Elwood is an active five-string banjoist in both the realms of experimental and bluegrass music. He recently played on the premiere of Hanover by Alvin Lucier, a composition using three banjos played with ebows with chamber ensemble. This summer he is working on a new composition written for him by Christian Wolff. He has collaborated guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, cellist Hank Roberts, the Callithumpian Consort of the New England Conservatory, Zeitgeist, bluegrass legend John Hartford, and pipa player Min Xiao-Fen , among many others.