Jason Koski/University Photography

Dwight Carroll plays guitar at Soup and Hope, March 15.

Unlike the past Soup and Hope events, on March 15 area musician Dwight Carroll provided blues, jazz and Latin sounds, singing and playing guitar in Sage Chapel. Intermittently, he told anecdotes related to his lifelong pursuit of music.

In introducing Carroll, Victor Younger, diversity and special programs coordinator for residential programs, said that he had heard Carroll's music in many venues. "When I hear Dwight play, I'm taken aback by his passion that transcends through each note he plays. … Dwight's peaceful spirit and love for this art is inspiring and contagious," he said.

In his early 20s and 30s, Carroll played guitar and toured nationally and internationally with such recording artists as Mary Wells, Ralphie Pagan, Joe Bataan, '80s dance group Shalamar and blues artist Papa John Creach.

"While I was with Papa John, I began to speculate that whatever was inside a person would eventually come out, in creative musical expression. Not always obvious, mostly subtly, but it was there if you paid attention," Carroll said.

Carroll said that his mother, who was raised in the British West Indies, taught the family the values of formality and the art of listening; his father, the love of classical music and black-and-white film. In 1962 the family of seven moved to California, where Carroll first learned guitar. He bought his own electric guitar and amplifier five years later and has been hooked ever since.

By ninth grade, he started a band and later joined a Latin trio.

During and after his years of touring, he managed a music store and performed at parties and other events in the homes of some of Los Angeles' most successful music singers, songwriters and producers. Then, he turned his talents toward recording and production, becoming the in-house recording engineer at the Colburn School for Performing Arts in Los Angeles and launching his own venture, Pandingo Recording Studio.

Speaking of his love of music, Carroll said, "It is my belief that love can lead to hope. Music is my hope. Music alters my consciousness, my perception of reality as something better, something more fluid with a heightened connectivity to all living things."

Carroll now works with individuals in the Ithaca area on recording projects. His wife, Catherine Thrasher-Carroll, is a mental health promotion coordinator in Gannett Health Services.