Patricia Gay Wood

Patsy Lynch (Davenport) Wood (1923 – 2024)

Patricia (Patsy) Wood, an Early Music pioneer, educator, and music therapist, died this past Tuesday, April 9, at Boulder Canyon Health and Rehabilitation in Boulder. She was 100 years old. A woman of extraordinary zeal and breadth of activities, Wood nurtured several lives over those ten decades: professional performer, music teacher, feminist, Jungian, war resister, founder of an experimental artist’s community, a mother and wife, twice married and twice raised a family. At 60 she returned to school to get her certificate in gerontology and music therapy, then practiced for another 18 years. She “retired” to be closer to her family in Colorado where she has resided since 2004.

Patricia Gay Lynch was born on June 13, 1923, in Chicago Illinois, to Arthur Daniel Lynch (1892-1968) and Grace Lucille Bacon (1894-1979). She followed her passion for the arts by attending the influential Black Mountain College in rural North Carolina (1942-1948) where she studied art with Josef Albers, weaving with Anni Albers, literature with Eric Bentley, and music with conductor Heinrich Jalowetz and musicologist Edward Lowinsky, graduating in 1948 with a certificate in music. She stayed on campus that summer to work with composer John Cage as his assistant for his seminal Erik Satie Festival.

After college, Patsy moved to New York City where she first found work under Hilla von Rebay at the Museum for Non-Objective Painting, before it would become known as the iconic Guggenheim Museum. In 1949 she met and married her firsthusband LaNoue Davenport. As a harpsichordist, viola da gambist, and singer, she participated in numerous concerts and recordings with Davenport (including the Manhattan Consort), the two becoming leaders in the emerging American Early Music movement. In the mid-50s the couple co-founded the Gate Hill Cooperative community, 30 miles north of New York City, with fellow Black Mountain alumni Paul and Vera Williams, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, David Tudor, Stan VanDerBeek and others. 

In 1963 Patsy moved to Los Angeles, California where she met and married her second husband, the painter and educator Melvin R. Wood. In L.A, she taught music at private schools and performed with the Camerata Musicale, the Renaissance Consort, and Musica Pacifica. Her work on Musica Pacifica’s recording of La Dafne (1608), on the ABC/Command label under Paul Vorwerk (1975), helped the group earn the Record World Critics Award for Best Classical Recording, as well as a Grammy nomination. 

In the 1980s Patsy enrolled at California State-Long Beach, completing her certification residency in music therapy and gerontology at Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. For the next two decades she lectured and worked with the elderly through the Santa Barbara City College Adult Education Program, retiring there in 2003. 

In 2004 Wood moved to Boulder, Colorado and spent the last eight years of her life living in Louisville, CO. As a mother and grandmother, Patsy will forever be remembered as the life of the party. Her impromptu comedic skits entertained two generations of friends and family, including her marginally embarrassed children and very indulgent and cajoling grandchildren.

Wood is preceded in death by her two older brothers Robert E. Lynch (1919-2011), of Clayton, St. Louis, MO, and KedricMiles Lynch (1921-1992) of Coarsegold, Madera, CA. She is survived by her two sons Darius Davenport (Susan), of Fair Oaks, CA, and Mark Davenport (Marilyn), of Louisville, CO.; a stepson Matthew Wood (Linda), of Philo, CA, and stepdaughter Hilary Wood Goldner (Bill), of Long Beach, CA; five grandchildren (Sasha, Miles, Zachary, Milan and Jonah); a nephew, Randall Lynch (Laura) and a niece, Lucinda Lynch; and three grand nephews and nieces (Raymi, Maureen, and Michelle).

The family is planning a small private memorial celebration. Those wishing to honor her life are encouraged to consider making a donation to the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, for which Patsy was a lifelong member and supporter.

Donations can be made directly on their website: https://http://www.blackmountaincollege.org/donate/

Or by check to: Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, P.O. Box 18912, Asheville, NC 28814. 

In the "note field" on the online donation page (or on the check), please write "In Memory of Patsy Lynch Wood," so that your donation can be acknowledged. 

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