ABOUT
Jon Scoville was raised in Connecticut, ruined in New York, and... restored in California!
Over 50 of Jon’s scores have been commissioned by choreographers and dance companies, including the Alwin Nikolais Dance Theater, Murray Louis Dance Company, TranChan of Brazil, Laura Dean, Sara Rudner, Oakland Ballet, Hovik Ballet of Oslo, Compagnie Hors Taxes of Paris, the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company of Salt Lake City, New Music Works, and many more commissions for Tandy Beal & Company, where he is the founding Musical Director. He has composed for films with Denise Gallant, Antonio Luis Mendes (Rio de Janeiro) and a Man Ray film; commercials for Digital Equipment Corp, and Nissan; and corporate events for LucasFilms, Zales, and Capitol Exhibits.
Jon has created sound installations for the Seibu Department store in Tokyo, an art gallery in São Paulo, and with visual artists Ellen Bromberg, Carlene Jiménez, and Sage Lee at sites in California and Utah. Radio appearances include Radio Belgrade, Radio Free Europe, and NPR.
He has been a columnist for Percussive Notes and is the author of Sound Designs, a book about the design and construction of musical instruments, with craftsman Reinhold Banek.
His work has been funded by the California Arts Council, NEA, Salt Lake Arts Commission, Arts Council of Santa Cruz County, Meet the Composer/West, and Utah Arts Council.
Jon, now Professor Emeritus, taught for 40 years at the University of Utah--Aesthetics for grads, Rhythmic Analysis, Composition, Senior Projects, Music and Choreography. While there, he started Samba Gringa, the world’s only almost all female, almost all white, almost all Mormon Samba Band–which opened for Earth, Wind and Fire, and played at the SLC Olympics, Utah Jazz, and Park City Film Festival. His creativity, exuberance, and thoughtful guidance inspired the faculty to establish a scholarship in his name. If he hadn’t met his wife, Tandy six decades ago, he’d be playing guitar in a country and western band in Nashville and voting Republican.
EDUCATION
In no particular order, his education includes (but not limited to): 2 years in New York City, church sexton, cannery worker, student of North Indian music with Ali Akbar Khan, partner with Tandy Beal for a million years, one-month suspension from Lenox School, guitar player in a bluegrass band, road manager for performing arts groups from North India, Kerala, Korea, and Indonesia, peyote, three months of journalism and music in Brazil, knee surgery, bank clerk, anthropology classes with Gregory Bateson, literature with Harry Berger and Harold Bloom, electronic music with Gordon Mumma and Vladimir Ussachevsky, poetry with Mark Strand, telephone solicitor, military helicopter factory worker, bass player in a jazz-rock band, drug abuse, irrational 49ers fan, 3 years at Yale on full scholarship, playing guitar with Elizabeth Cotten at her home, State Department concert tour of Eastern Europe as composer/music director for Tandy, hippie, sound installations in art galleries in São Paulo, Tokyo, Salt Lake, and an earthquake site in Santa Cruz, dance accompanist, percussionist with Samba Cruz, long walks in the woods, librarian, motorcyclist, bicyclist, idealist, surrealist, listlist, resident of Kyoto for five months, visitor to Paleolithic temples in Malta, teacher in Angers, France at the Centre Nationale de la Danse Contemporaine & Flemish University in Brussels, first employee at Bookshop Santa Cruz, construction worker, amateur theologian, moon gazer, poetry eater, electronic musician, assembly-line and bottling-plant worker, chronic Celtics fan, artist-in-residence at Snowbird Institute and University of Hawaii, set designer for PBS’s Voice Dance with Bobby McFerrin and Tandy, hitchhiker across America in 4.5 days, composer, teacher in workshops from A–Z (Aix-en-Provence, Oslo, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Paris, Honolulu, London, Salvador, Kyoto, Zurich), board of advisors for Experimental Musical Instruments, married to Tandy — his eternal muse (and eternal confuse!) — and blah, blah, blah.
Other teachers include chaos, stillness, and cats.
