7 Jan 2015

Teacher Spotlight: Scott Morris

Scott Morris is a guitarist, composer, teacher and a close friend to GSI who has contributed to the guitar community for many years. He has especially contributed to GSI’s blog with very comprehensive and substantial video lessons which have been huge hits. Read on to learn more about Morris’ deep-rooted career as a musician.

Scott Morris gave his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 1998. He has studied at Yale University, the USC Thornton School of Music, the Aspen Music Festival, Musician’s Institute (GIT) and Claremont Graduate University from which he holds the degree of Doctorate of Musical Arts.

Scott is a founding member of Line Forms Hear along with Julian Coryell and Steven Thachuk; together, the group has performed throughout the US as well as Europe. Their 2009 tour took them to the Southeast US, England, Midwest, and California. Highlights included England’s Bath Festival, a live DVD recording in Orlando with excerpts airing on CBS television, and the Dominguez Hills Guitar Festival in Los Angeles. He also performs with the Kravchak Morris Duo along with oboist/English hornist Richard Kravchak and has performed in duo recital with violinist and LA Phil concertmaster Martin Chalifour.

Morris has appeared as a soloist throughout North America, South America, Europe and Asia. In 2005, he gave his Chinese debuts in both Beijing and Shanghai to great critical review. Recent festival appearances have been made at the FIMM (Mexico), St. Joseph Guitar Festival, Boston Guitar Fest, Iserlohn International Guitar Symposium (Germany), Beijing Guitar Festival (China), the Bath Festival (England), and the Dominguez Hills Guitar Festival.

Dr. Morris is equally respected for his work on the concert stage, in the classroom and the recording studio. He has released three solo recordings (Danza, Invocation, and the Solo Guitar Music of Paganini (Centaur Records). His latest recording entitled Phonology is a collection of his arrangement of the eccentric French composer Erik Satie.

His textbook for learning the guitar, Classical Guitar Complete: from Basics to Bach, was released in 2010 by MidShelf Music. Along with a series of YouTube videos for GSI (Guitar Salon International), Classical Guitar Complete has become very popular with guitarists and teachers, and it is used at numerous colleges and universities throughout the country.

Currently, he is Supervisor of Guitar Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He served as the Convention Director for the 2007 Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) Convention and Competition in Los Angeles, California and now as the Artistic Director for the annual Dominguez Hills Guitar Festival. His compositions and arrangements are published by ClearNote Publications and MidShelf. He is represented by BMI Classical.