Scott Robinson
201-836-0082
scottrobinsong@earthlink.net
Biography
One of today's most wide-ranging instrumentalists, Scott Robinson has been heard on
tenor sax with Buck Clayton's band, on trumpet with Lionel Hampton's quintet, on
alto clarinet with Paquito D'Rivera's clarinet quartet, and on bass sax with the
New York City Opera. On these and other instruments including theremin and
ophicleide, he has been heard with a cross-section of jazz's greats representing
nearly every imaginable style of the music, from Braff to Braxton. Scott has been
heard numerous times on film, radio and television, and his discography now includes
more than 190 recordings. His releases as a leader have garnered five-star reviews
from Leonard Feather, Down Beat Magazine and other sources worldwide. One,
Melody From the Sky (featuring the seldom-heard C-Melody saxophone), was recently
the subject of a Wall Street Journal article by Nat Hentoff. His newest,
Forever Lasting (featuring the compositions of Thad Jones and with guest artist
Hank Jones), appeared on four "Best Of" lists for 2008 including All About Jazz
and Jazz Improv Magazine.
A busy traveller, Scott has performed in some thirty nations, once completing
tours on five continents in a three-month period. He has performed in such diverse and prestigious
venues as Carnegie Hall, the Village Vanguard, the Library of Congress and the Vienna Opera House.
His performances for dignitaries worldwide have included a U.S. Presidential Inauguration and a command performance honoring the birthday of the king of Thailand. Scott's group was selected to be the closing act at the Knitting
Factory's Sun Ra Festival in New York City. Scott has also written magazine
articles and liner notes, and was an invited speaker at the Congressional Black
Caucus Jazz Forum in Washington, D.C.
Scott was selected by the US State Department to be a Jazz Ambassador for 2001, completing an eight-week, eleven-country tour of West Africa performing his arrangements of the compositions of Louis Armstrong (later featured on his CD Jazz Ambassador).
Scott's many works as a composer cover a very wide range, from solo performance pieces, jazz tunes and songs, a suite for jazz quintet based on the titles of Doc Savage pulp novels of the thirties and forties, and chamber works such as his Immensities for Large Instruments, on up to large-scale compositions for wind symphony and even combined orchestras.
The son of a piano teacher and a National Geographic writer/editor, Scott Robinson
was born on April 27, 1959 in New Jersey, and grew up in an eighteenth century
Virginia farmhouse. While in high school, he received the "Louis Armstrong Award",
and the "Best Soloist Award" from the National Association of Jazz Educators.
In 1981, he graduated from Boston's Berklee College of Music, and a year later
became, at 22, Berklee's youngest faculty member.
Since moving to New York in 1984, Scott has been awarded four fellowships by
the National Endowment for the Arts, and participated in a number of
Grammy-nominated and Grammy-winning recordings. He has been profiled in new editions of the
Encyclopedia of Jazz and Grove's Dictionary of Jazz, along with books by Royal Stokes,
Nat Hentoff and others. In 1997, a 4-minute CNN
program featured Scott and the giant contrabass saxophone which he used on his CD,
Thinking Big. Scott has been the winner of a number Down Beat Critics Polls and Jazz Journalists
Association awards in recent years.
Now a resident of Teaneck, NJ, Scott has constructed a studio/laboratory for sonic research, containing
an astonishing assortment of instruments and devices. His first solo and collaborative recordings from this
facility will soon appear under his ScienSonic Laboratories imprint.
A respected performer in all areas of jazz, from traditional to avant-garde, Scott Robinson has arrived at his own unique musical voice which, as once described in a Northsea Jazz Festival program, "combines solid foundations with great daring".
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