SCOTT DUNN

American conductor and pianist, Scott Dunn, made his 1999 Carnegie Hall debut with the American Composers Orchestra playing his own orchestration of Vernon Duke’s ‘lost’ 1923 “Piano Concerto in C”. Dunn’s distinguished musical mentors have included Lukas Foss, Byron Janis, Leonard Rosenman and Richard Rodney Bennett among others and his diverse education includes musical studies at the Manhattan School of Music, USC and Aspen as well as an M.D. from the University of Iowa and board certification in eye surgery.

Dunn held his first conducting post from 1999-2001, working intimately with Maestro Lukas Foss while serving as associate music director for Foss’s Music Festival of the Hamptons. In that capacity Dunn earned considerable acclaim from the press…”he is a conductor of great promise, a pianist of note, and a sensitive and intelligent artist. All of these elements came together to give the audience an experience closer to heaven than most of us will get in this lifetime… I cannot praise Mr. Dunn’s conducting too highly.” In 2001-2002 he made his first European orchestral conducting engagements and, in 2002, John Mauceri appointed Dunn conducting assistant for the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in Los Angeles. From 2003-2004, Dunn served as music director for La Fabbrica – a California based opera company with summer productions in Tuscany – with whom he led performances of Puccini’s La Boheme, Weill’s Kleine Mahagonny, and Ricky Ian Gordon’s 2244 Shore Point Road at Teatro Giotto in Vicchio, Tuscany. Later that same season, he music directed, at the request of the composer, the pre-production recording of Mark Adam’s new opera “Lysitsrata”. In January 2005 Dunn premiered “Animal Tales” a new children’s opera by Kitty Brazelton and George Plimpton for Atlantic Center of the Arts in Florida and Family Opera Initiative. Dunn’s conducting career was given a boost in February of 2006, when he became a last minute replacement for ailing Maestro Terry Edwards and, on little or no rehearsal, conducted before an audience of 5000 Howard Shore’s massive six movement “Lord of the Rings Symphony” with the Orchestre National de Lyon. In spring of 2006 there followed more performances of “Lord of the Rings” with the symphonies in North Carolina and Guanajuato Mexico, a well-received performance of “Pierrot Lunaire” at Lincoln Center and Malcolm Williamson’s “Happy Prince” for Kentucky Opera. Dunn spent the summer of 2006 as assistant conductor for Glimmerglass Opera where he led the world premiere of Richard Rodney Bennett’s “The Garden”. Since fall of 2006, he has worked as assistant conductor for Pittsburgh Opera where he most recently led the studio run of Britten’s “Billy Budd” and a student matinee of Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliette”.

As a pianist, Dunn began his professional career in Los Angeles in 1991 with a solo recital that elicited raves from the Los Angeles Times, “an abundance of technique and musicality… Gifted indeed!” wrote critic Daniel Carriaga. In 1993, Dunn won the prestigious ‘Artistic Ambassadors Competition’ and subsequently toured Europe and former states of the Soviet Union for the USIS – introducing many of those locales to such classics of American piano literature as the Carter “Piano Sonata” and the “Concord Sonata” of Charles Ives. Dunn’s Carnegie Hall debut with Dennis Russell Davies and the American Composers Orchestra took place as part of the Gershwin Centenary concerts of the 1998-1999 concert season. He performed Vernon Duke's previously unperformed “Piano Concerto in C” - a work written in 1923 for Arthur Rubinstein, but completed only in two-piano score by the composer. Working from the two-piano version, Dunn orchestrated the entire concerto in 1998 for its successful 1999 premiere. Dunn made a second Carnegie Hall solo appearance in 2001, again with Davies and the A.C.O. playing the “Spellbound Concerto” of Rosza In 2004, Dunn was a last-minute replacement for an ailing Leonard Stein on the prestigious Piano Spheres series in Los Angeles and his recital prompted Alan Rich of LA Weekly to write, “In a time when we are beset with young emergent performers of limited repertory delivered with unlimited flamboyance, the splendid young pianist Scott Dunn’s varied and visionary program was indeed remarkable.” Of a recent 2007 solo appearance on the Jacaranda series in Los Angeles the LA Times raved that his performance was “suave, masterly, insouciant, nostalgic and exuberant…absolutely riveting.”

Also a sought-after collaborator, Dunn has toured Europe with the Martha Graham Dance Company and he often appears in piano four-hand collaboration with his friend and colleague, the distinguished composer-pianist Richard Rodney Bennett. Dunn has also made numerous concert appearances with such noted singers as Kurt Ollmann, Joyce Castle, Marni Nixon and Angelina Reaux. A review of an appearance with Angelina Reaux noted that ” not every good pianist can be a good accompanist. Scott Dunn is a superb pianist and he was extraordinary in his phrase by phrase attentiveness and his clear understanding of the singer’s art.“ Of his 2002 world premiere with Kurt Ollmann of Ned Rorem's song cycle "Another Sleep" at Lincoln Center the New York Times wrote, “It was in fact the piano – so expressively played by Scott Dunn – that set out and sustained each song’s compass.” Also

Dunn was born and raised in Eagle Grove, Iowa - where his father ran the local bank. At age seven, he developed an interest in music and fell in love with the piano. Dunn began studies with Alice Hackett in nearby Fort Dodge Iowa. Hackett, a one-time student of E. Robert Schmitz and Ernest Hutchinson, was a sophisticated and remarkable mentor who introduced Dunn to the world of classical music and had him making solo concerto appearances with local orchestras by age twelve. Dunn received a full ride merit scholarship to study piano performance the University of Iowa from noted pianist John Simms. Simms, a Curtis graduate and student of David Saperstein, who was best known for his ground-breaking recordings of the Ives violin sonatas with Rafael Drurian. After ‘testing out’ of the equivalent of three semesters of liberal arts credits, Dunn received a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Bachelor of Music degree (summa cum laude) after only five semesters in Iowa City. After some discouraging encounters with international piano competitions, Dunn next attended the University of Southern California where he hedged his career bet by completing pre-med course-work, while continuing graduate level music studies with legendary chamber pianist Brooks Smith. Dunn was accepted into the distinguished College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, where he earned a Medical Doctorate (while the while continuing studies with his beloved John Simms). He next completed a surgical internship at L.A. County/U.S.C. Medical Center followed by a research fellowship and residency in ophthalmology at the U.S.C./Doheny Eye Institute. Dunn then entered private ophthalmology practice in L.A. for a period with Dr. Michael Colvard, earning board certification in ophthalmology and fellowship in the American College of Surgeons.

About this same time Dunn began private studies in composition with Oscar-winning film composer Leonard Rosenman. In 1991, with Rosenman’s encouragement, Dunn’s professional music career began in earnest with a finger-busting solo recital at Japan America Theater in Los Angeles - a performance that prompted the raves noted above from Los Angeles Times critic Daniel Carriaga – “clearly born to play the piano. An abundance of technique and musicality”.

Encouraged, Dunn re-entered the world of piano competition and won the prestigious “Artistic Ambassador’s Competition” of the USIA – which resulted in a six week solo tour of Europe, Eastern Europe and numerous states of the former Soviet Union. A subsequent prize from the “Artists International Competition” awarded Dunn a well-received 1994 solo recital at Merkin Hall. Soon thereafter, Dunn - who had by now completely quit his surgical practice - moved to New York City and was soon befriended by such distinguished New York composers as “Bud” Bazelon, Richard Rodney Bennett and Elliott Carter. Dunn began studies at the Manhattan School of Music where he studied piano with legendary pianist Byron Janis – as well as conducting with David Gilbert and composition/orchestration with Ludmila Uhlehla. In 1996, he completed a Masters Degree in Music and was also awarded the Presidents Award and the Cohn Prize for Chamber Music by the Manhattan School. Also while at Manhattan School he spent two summers as a full scholarship student at Aspen Music Festival and School – where he audited the conducting programs and was a fellow in Adele Addison’s vocal chamber program – and also pursued private conducting instruction from Harold Farberman and received private lessons in orchestration from his friend, mentor and sometime two-piano partner Richard Rodney Bennett.

In his work with Lukas Foss from 1999 – 2001 Dunn gained considerable experience as a conductor, performer and programmer in has capacity as associate music director for the Music Festival of the Hamptons. Beginning in 2001, he began assisting Maestro John Mauceri and in that capacity he worked not only with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in Los Angeles, but with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, the Baltimore Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic and other prominent orchestras. Dunn also assisted him in the preparation of numerous arrangements and suites of music from Hollywood film scores, as well as with the restoration, editing and recording of George Gershwin’s original 1935 version of ‘Porgy and Bess’ which recorded by Mauceri with the Nashville Symphony for Decca. In similar capacity, Dunn received a producer credit for his assistance in recording and editing of Danny Elfman’s “Serenada Schizophrana” which Mauceri conducted for Sony.

Dunn himself has premiered or recorded for commercial release works by such prominent composers as Irwin Bazelon, Richard Rodney Bennett, Lord Berners, Lukas Foss, Ricky Ian Gordon, Peter Lieberson, Roger Reynolds, Ned Rorem, Leonard Rosenman and James Sellars. His numerous recordings on the Naxos, Albany, CRI and Neuma labels are all currently available on Amazon.com. Dunn’s 2005 recording for Naxos of the complete solo piano works of Lukas Foss prompted the New Yorker to write, “a delightful new disk. Dunn’s playing — lean, incisive, occasionally flamboyant — has just the touch this music needs.” In 2006, also for Naxos, he recorded his beloved Vernon Duke “Piano Concerto in C” (orchestrated Dunn 1998) at the famed Moscow Radio House studios in Moscow. The all-Duke CD, which also features the cello concerto and the solo “Homage to Boston” piano suite, was released in November 2007.

Current and future projects include upcoming chamber recordings for Naxos of the works and Alfano and others; the development of an ensemble, series and recordings dedicated to the arrangements and programming of Schoenberg’s 1918 -1921 Society for Private Performances; the editing of Danny Elfman’s “Ballet Uno” for summer 2008 for Twyla Tharp and the ABT; and the publication of a phrase book and musical lexicon in French, Italian, English and German for performers and conductors.

Dunn resides in Venice, California.