Perkins, Justin S. (Scott), Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Music
Connecticut native Scott Perkins enjoys a multifaceted career as an international prizewinning composer, a versatile performer, an award-winning scholar, and a music educator. His music includes art songs, musical theatre, solo instrumental works, choral music, electroacoustic media, and music for film and church, and has been performed throughout North America and Europe. The judges who awarded him a BMI Student Composer Award described his winning work as “a dramatic and strikingly beautiful example of choral writing which speaks to the heart as well as to the mind.” He has collaborated with musical and non-musical artists, including Tony Award-winning playwrights, Emmy-winning filmmakers, and prizewinning poets. In one of his more recent musical endeavors, Scott worked with Sir Peter Shaffer (Equus, Amadeus) while composing a score for the author’s play The Gift of the Gorgon. Performed at Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY, the play was directed by Tony Walton and starred Alec Baldwin.
Devoted particularly to early and new vocal music, Scott has concertized as a tenor throughout the United States, England, Mexico, Scotland, and Norway. He is a featured soloist on CDs produced by Bridge Records and Loft Recordings.
Scott is a scholar with a particular interest in the music of Benjamin Britten. His dissertation thesis, “‘Voices of Boys’: The Influence of Britten’s Missa Brevis on his War Requiem,” is based on a paper judged the best student paper presented at an American Musicological Society chapter meeting. He has also given presentations on musical topics at Harvard University and the University of Chicago.
Scott is a co-founder of Encore Music Creations, which provides concerts, church festivals, workshops and a host of other musical events and products. Encore has given concert tours in New England, southern California, and Norway with programs for organ, jazz piano, voice and alto saxophone. For more information, please visit www.EncoreMusicCreations.com.
Scott earned his Ph.D. in composition with minors in music theory and music history at the Eastman School of Music, where his primary teacher was Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. He holds master’s degrees in both music theory and music theory pedagogy from Eastman, and he has a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in music theory and composition with a sub-concentration in vocal performance from Boston University’s College of Fine Arts.
Scott was recently appointed Assistant Professor of Music at DePauw University, where he will teach courses in theory, aural skills, and composition. He is also in his first year of Instructor of Choral Studies at the Interlochen Summer Arts Academy, where he teaches music fundamentals to voice students in grades 7 through 12 and leads choral sectionals. He has served on the faculties of Central Connecticut State University and Nazareth College.
Current and upcoming projects include a commission from the Washington National Opera to write a short opera with librettist Nat Cassidy for performance at the Kennedy Center on November 19; a commission from the National Guild of Organists for a work for choir and organ to be premiered at their national convention in 2014; and the score for a film by Emmy-winning director David Marshall.
For more information about Scott and his music, please visit his website, www.scottperkins.org.
