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Patrick Scott, Artistic and Executive Director, is one of the most original thinkersabout classical music today. After two decades helming the critically-acclaimed concert series Jacaranda Music in Santa Monica, CA, he directs Jacaranda Media, centered on Jacaranda Live Recordings, a physical and digital recording label that also produces special classical music and technology events. Writing uncommonly detailed program notes from a broad inter-disciplinary perspective, Scott embodies what musical curation is all about—yet he has achieved that distinction with no formal music education.
Born in Manitoba, Canada, and naturalized as a US citizen in 2015, Scott’s American schooling in the visual arts, dance, and stage design led to a 15-year career on the West Coast as a designer and craftsman for film, television, stage, opera, ballet, and video. At age 16 he was the youngest member of the Gustav Mahler Society, an Eagle Scout decorated for high-endurance hikes, and a ballet dancer appearing with George Zorich, star of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. At University of California Irvine, he was awarded the Chancellor’s Award and President’s Fellowship for painting. His teachers were among the “who’s who” of California artists – Robert Irwin, Vija Celmins, Kenneth Price, Tony Delap, and Ed Moses. After a summer scholarship at the American School of Dance, he performed in UCI’s lavish oratorio/ballet Catulli Carmina by Carl Or. He attended master classes with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, as well as graduate seminars in art history with Barbara Rose and acoustics at UCLA.
Scott designed the set, costumes and lighting for UCI’s first Master’s thesis in directing and was the first student to design for UCI’s Claire Trevor Theatre—then the Village Theater’s inaugural production of Camino Real guest-directed by Tennessee Williams specialist Herbert Machiz. The U.S. premiere of Vesalii Icones, a dance drama by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies for Monday Evening Concerts at LA County Museum of Art, was his first professional achievement merging concept with design. As Patrick Marca Registrada, Scott’s Hollywood o-screen credits include Lipstick (starring Anne Bancroft); Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond the Stars and Planet of Horror; and Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings. At NBC his work appeared in The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The Bob Hope Show, and the soap opera Days of Our Lives; as well as in two major motion pictures: The Bodyguard and Cable Guy. Stage work included A Man for All Seasons (starring Charleton Heston) at Ahmanson Theater, and The Tempest (starring Sir Anthony Hopkins) at Mark Taper Forum, as well as Saint Joan for Seattle Repertory Theater featuring Roberta Maxwell, John DeLancie, and Jean Smart. Opera included Samson et Dalila (starring Shirley Verrett and Placido Domingo) for PBS Great Performances live from the San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House.
He danced in two episodes of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre on Showtime. Costume design for dance included Bella Lewitzky Dance Company, five seasons of Eyes Wide Open Dance Theater, Jazz Tap Ensemble, Los Angeles Chamber Ballet, and commissioned designs for Santa Barbara Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet. In addition to co-conceiving and designing Cinderella at Midnight, the final Cockette’s midnight show in San Francisco’s Palace Theater, he designed star wardrobe and made a cameo appearance in the film Garage Sale (starring Goldie Glitters). The film screened as part of Los Angeles 1955-85, a notorious 2006 exhibition in Paris’ Centre Pompidou. Scott designed wardrobe for two 1984 Olympic Video Art commissions and appeared sleeping in Bill Viola’s video installation The Sleepers (1992). His pioneering music videos are held in the Getty Center’s legendary archive from the Long Beach Museum of Art.
Scott’s non-profit leadership included producing innovative interdisciplinary cultural collaborations and two extensive anthologies geared to high school teachers and their students for Los Angeles Educational Partnership. For the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, he co-produced a live broadcast on KUSC of Angeles Quartet with pianist Gloria Cheng and baritone Hector Gonzales in music by Korngold and Schoenberg. Scott produced the West Coast debut of duo-pianists Double Edge. As Executive Director of Film Independent (then Independent Feature Project West) he helped expand the Spirit Awards to become what it is today and lobby into existence the congressionally authorized Independent Television Service (ITVS) on PBS. He directed a ground-breaking education program for Peter Sellars’ LA Festival and chaired the Motion Picture Centennial Committee under the auspices of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
As co-chair of the National Alliance of Media Arts Centers, and President of the National Alliance for Freedom of Expression, he facilitated suing the National Endowment for the Arts on behalf of four censored artists, achieving victory at Royball Ninth Circuit Court, only to be defeated on appeal by the U.S. Supreme Court. He wrote the official Quaker history of Pasadena’s Pacific Oaks College & Children’sschool and secured a major grant from Keck Foundation for the institution. As chief development officer of LA’s BEST after school enrichment program in the Mayor’s Office, City of Los Angeles, he helped raise over $16 million and secured funds from the Broad Foundation to initiate art, music and dance residencies in over 194 public elementary schools throughout Los Angeles County. For the Colburn School, he curated Found Horizon: Stravinsky in LA’s Progressive Music Scene 1949-66, a Pacific Standard Time event sponsored by the Getty Center.
Scott established artistic partnerships with Jacaranda and LA Phil including “Left Coast West Coast”, “Americans in Americas,” “Focus on Eötvös”, and “Minimalist Jukebox”. The LA Opera’s “Ring Festival LA” partnership was followed by “Britten 100.” Scott can be seen acting as one of Christopher Plummer’s close circle of friends in the Oscar-winning film Beginners directed by Mike Mills. Scott’s “Cage 100” festival gave the world premiere of John Cage’s The Ten Thousand Things, landing it on LA Times “International Best” list. Cage was also celebrated with a 24-hour performance of Eric Satie’s complete Vexations that employed 36 pianists. Garnering considerable press, the semi-staged world premiere of the opera Arkhipov by Peter Knell, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer, was timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the 1962 “Cuban Missile Crisis”. For its final season, Jacaranda offered “Planet Schoenberg” celebrating the 150th birthday of the great composer. His youngest son, Larry Schoenberg recently singled out Jacaranda for having done more to serve his father’s legacy than any other organization.
Scott produced the West Coast premiere of David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning the little match girl passion with an incandescent quartet of singing percussionists led by tenor Grant Gershon. “The audience sat transfixed,” wrote Mark Swed of the LA Times, “the performance was a stunner.” A friendship with Lang led to Jacaranda’s LA premiere of the composer’s darker for 12 solo strings (“absorbing…gleamingly energized” – LA Times) and sleepers prayer, a co-commission with the LA Phil for its inaugural new music marathon Noon to Midnight. BBC Music Magazine recognized Scott’s curatorial vision with their editors’ choice of Jacaranda among the 20 best live concerts in North America. His “OM Century”, a 2-year celebration of the Olivier Messiaen centenary, garnered international attention for its daring scope. Of the celebration’s grand finale concert Alan Rich, dean of American critics, wrote “I cannot remember a better-imagined, better played program supercharged with the pleasure of discovery…improbable but tangible deliciousness…”