Stephen Allen Scott

1944 - 2021

Scott, Stephen Allen

Stephen Allen Scott, a composer and longtime music professor at Colorado College, died on March 10, 2021 from complications of dementia. Scott is known internationally as a pioneer of the "bowed piano."
Scott was born in Corvallis, Oregon in 1944. After high school, he enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed at Fort Ord, California. Following his service, he enrolled at the University of Oregon, where he graduated in 1967 with a bachelor's degree in Music. He went on to earn an MA in music composition from Brown University in 1969, and then joined the faculty at Colorado College, where he taught courses in jazz, composition, and electronic and experimental music.
At Colorado College, Scott founded the Bowed Piano Ensemble, in which ten musicians, most of them CC students and directed by Scott, used nylon filament, rosined horsehair and other implements to create an orchestral sound from the inside of a grand piano. The ensemble gained international fame and toured widely over the next several decades including performances at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the Sydney Opera House. Scott was named 2008 USA Simon Fellow by United States Artists, and in 2004 he was a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center on Lake Como, Italy. He retired in 2014 as Professor Emeritus of Music at Colorado College. His music may be heard on the New Albion, Navona and Albany labels and at www.bowedpianoensemble.com.
Scott is survived by his wife Victoria Hansen, who toured with the Bowed Piano Ensemble as a soprano soloist, son Ben Scott and daughter Amy Scott, stepchildren Melissa and Richard Crompton, his siblings Peter Scott and Nancy Asbury and their children, as well as four grandchildren. He was predeceased by his second wife Sandra Baker Scott and was previously married to Linda Scott Crissey.
A celebration of life will be held in Colorado Springs when it is safer to gather. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (theaftd.org) or to Other Minds (OtherMinds.org), an organization dedicated to championing new and experimental music.