Who We Are

Scott Free is professor of Jazz Composition (retired) at Berklee College of Music.

He studied music at the University of Southern Mississippi and toured with the USM jazz lab band. In 1972 he came to Boston to study and earned a Bachelor of Music Degree at Berklee, joining the faculty in 1975. In 1982 he completed a Master of Music Degree in Jazz Studies at New England Conservatory with honors.

As a professor, Free played guitar in Berklee faculty bands since 1988 and is a featured composer in the Faculty Concert Series. Scott Free has performed in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, in the southern U. S. and throughout the New England area with groups that have included Tony Award winning singer James Naughton, saxophonists George Garzone, Tim Ries, bassists John Neves, Steve Laspina, sax/clarinetist John LaPorta, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, drummers Joe Hunt, Michael Baker, Terry Lynne Carrington, and many others. His arrangements have appeared in textbooks and have been performed by bands from Vermont to Louisiana, from California to New York as well as Europe and Asia. Recordings of his guitar performance and compositions have been aired on N.P.R. and other radio stations in Boston, Providence, and New York City. He endorses Buscarino guitars and Evans Amplifiers.

As a guest clinician/lecturer/adjudicator he has appeared at jazz festivals, music conventions, and colleges in Italy (Umbria and Rome), Scandinavia, at Boston’s Symphony Hall (Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra), Koyo Conservatory in Japan, Seoul Jazz Academy in S. Korea, Brazil, at I.C.O.M. in Kuala Lumpur, Scotland, and the U.S. He has received numerous awards from ASCAP as well as the Ted Pease award at Berklee for his contribution to the improvement of teaching. His former students hold important posts in Japan, Scandinavia, Korea, Europe, Malaysia, Canada, South America and the U.S.