Coordinates: 40°37′24″N 73°57′42″W / 40.623334°N 73.961678°W / 40.623334; -73.961678

Midwood is a neighborhood in the south central part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is within Community District 14, and is patrolled by the 61st, 66th and 70th precincts of the New York City Police Department.

It is bounded on the north by the Bay Ridge Branch freight line tracks just above Avenue I and Brooklyn College campus of the City University of New York, and on the south by Avenue P and Kings Highway. The eastern border is Nostrand Avenue or Flatbush Avenue and Coney Island Avenue, McDonald Avenue or Ocean Parkway to the west is the other boundary.

The name, Midwood, derives from the Dutch word, "Midwout" (middle woods), the name the settlers of New Netherland called the area of dense woodland midway between the towns of Boswyck (Bushwick) and Breuckelen (Brooklyn). Later, it became part of old Flatbush, situated between the towns of Gravesend and Flatlands.

Settlement was begun by the Dutch in 1652, and they later gave way to the English (who conquered it in 1664), but the area remained rural and undeveloped for the most part until its annexation to the City of Brooklyn. It became more developed in the 1920s when large middle-class housing tracts and apartment buildings were built.

Rudresh Mahanthappa (b. May 4, 1971) is a New York-based jazz alto saxophonist and composer.

Mahanthappa was born in Trieste, Italy, and grew up in Boulder, Colorado. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1992 and received his Master of Fine Arts degree in jazz composition from Chicago's DePaul University in 1998. During his time at Berklee, he was introduced to the music of Indian saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath, whose use of a Western instrument in the context of Carnatic music surprised and inspired Mahanthappa. He would later travel to India on a grant to work with Gopalnath; the two played together in concert between 2005 and 2008, and collaborated on the album Kinsmen (2008), which fuses Western and Indian approaches to improvisation.

Mahanthappa has frequently been listed in Down Beat's Critics Poll since 2003, and was named both "#1 Rising Star Jazz Artist" and "#1 Rising Star Alto Saxophonist" in the 2010 poll. In 2011, he was voted the #1 Alto Saxophonist of the Year by the 59th Annual Down Beat Critics Poll. He has been awarded numerous grants for his compositions, including being given the NY Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Music (2006), three Rockefeller MAP grants, and two New York State Council on the Arts grants. In 2008, he was named a Guggenheim fellow to pursue his interest in how Indian Carnatic music can inform and serve as an inspiration for American jazz. The Jazz Journalists Association named Mahanthappa the Alto Saxophonist of the Year in 2009, 2010, and 2011. He has five albums out as a leader or co-leader on labels including Pi Recordings and Savoy Jazz. Mahanthappa's playing and composing are firmly ensconced in the highest of the New York jazz scene today.