“Scott Patterson may turn out to be one of the most important composers of the 21st century,” predicts Peale Center director Nancy Proctor after seeing Scott play last year. “As an audience member, I can say that his original compositions, which blend an incredible range of genres and instruments, from the Peale’s 19th-century piano to 21st-century beat boxing, are moving in a way I’ve never heard before.”
Last fall, the Peale was fortunate to host the premier of Scott’s operatic ballet, the Cease & Desist Ballet, created by Afro House Baltimore, an organization that’s “committed to the development of a music culture that is disruptive, exuberant, innovative, emergent, and transformative.” Proctor says she’s been a fan ever since seeing the ballet at the Peale Center.
She’s not the only one who’s taken note of Patterson’s performances. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review describes Patterson’s playing as, “a masterly blend of virtuosity, singing style and beautiful voicing.” His blend of classical, soul and rock music is futuristic, emotive and luxuriant. Early this year, Scott received the $40,000 Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize, the largest artist award given in the region.
Scott has toured with Camille A. Brown & Dancers andat numerous venues, including the Lincoln Center, Belfast Festival at Queen’s, White Bird, The Joyce Theater, and Debartolo Performing Arts Center. He is contributing composer of the Bessie Award winning Mr. TOL E. RAncE and Brown’s critically acclaimed work, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play.
Here in Baltimore, Scott has taken on a new challenge: composing new pieces for the Peale’s 1879 Knabe Square Grand Piano – a very different sounding instrument from a modern piano. He’ll perform in the Peale’s historic Picture Gallery on August 8, and the performance will be recorded by Peale residents, ArtsLaureate, for publication. The Peale gratefully accepted the piano from the Baltimore Museum of Industry because it dates to the period when the Peale was Male and Female Colored School No. 1, and Baltimore’s music scene first took flight: the decade when musical instrument manufacturers accounted for over 1% of the city’s GDP (there were three piano manufacturers in Baltimore in that period), and Ford’s Opera House hosted no fewer than 24 different opera companies! (See Jackson Gilman-Forlini in Maryland Historical Magazine, Spring/Summer 2017). This was the dynamic music scene into which Baltimore legends like Eubie Blake were born.
Symbolically, Scott’s concert brings together the birth of Baltimore’s modern music scene with the origins of public school education for people of color in the city and is an opportunity to think about the connections and legacy of both these historic moments for contemporary life in Baltimore.
The staging at the Peale will be unusual, offering an immersive environment to experience the music rather than usual concert seating. Audience members are welcome to bring cushions to lounge on during the performance, a modern-day version of the “groundlings” experience at the original Globe Theater!
An Elegant Rendezvous with Scott Patterson
August 8, starting with a champagne toast with Scott at 7pm, doors for general admission at 7:30pm, and the concert at 8pm.
Get your tickets through Artful.ly or Mixolo.
The Peale Museum’s founder, Rembrandt Peale, had introduced another new technology, gas lighting, to his galleries two generations before. In order to attract visitors at night and sell more tickets to his Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts, in 1816 Peale began illuminating his galleries with gas light chandeliers on specially-advertised evenings. By 1817, Rembrandt Peale and his partners had founded the Gas Light Company of Baltimore, which is today Baltimore Gas and Electric, and secured the contract to supply gas streetlights throughout the City of Baltimore. Through his efforts, Baltimore was the first city in the United States, and one of the first in the world, to be illuminated by gas lighting. Gas lights lined the streets of Baltimore up until the late 1950s when they almost entirely removed. Through the restoration of this pole and fire box, it will serve as an excellent artifact to showcase this aspect of Baltimore’s innovative history.