The Creative Music Guild’s Outset Series welcomes acclaimed drummer, composer, and bandleader Scott Amendola for a special evening of creative music and community. Known for his work with Nels Cline, Charlie Hunter, Jenny Scheinman, and numerous innovative projects spanning jazz, improvisation, and experimental music, Amendola brings his adventurous musical spirit to Portland for a unique performance and open session.

Following the featured set, the evening will open into a community improvisation jam, inviting musicians of all backgrounds and experience levels to participate. Bring your instrument, your curiosity, and your listening ears as we explore spontaneous music-making together

Scott Amendola: Drummer/Composer/Bandleader/Educator
“Amendola’s music is consistently engaging, both emotionally and intellectually, the product of a
fertile and inventive musical imagination.” Los Angeles Times
“If Scott Amendola didn’t exist, the San Francisco music scene would have to invent him.” Derk
Richardson, San Francisco Bay Guardian
“Amendola has complete mastery of every piece of his drumset and the ability to create a
plethora of sounds using sticks, brushes, mallets, and even his hands.”Steven Raphael, Modern
Drummer
“…drummer/signal-treater Scott Amendola is both a tyrant of heavy rhythm and an electric-
haired antenna for outworldly messages (not a standard combination).” Greg Burk, LA Weekly
For Scott Amendola, the drum kit isn’t so much an instrument as a musical portal. As an
ambitious composer, savvy bandleader, electronics explorer, first-call accompanist and
capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most inventive musicians, Amendola applies his
wide-ranging rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His closest musical associates
include guitarists Charlie Hunter, Nels Cline, and Jeff Parker, Hammond B-3 organist Wil
Blades, violinist Jenny Scheinman, saxophonist Phillip Greenlief, clarinetist Ben Goldberg,
bassists Trevor Dunn, and Todd Sickafoose, players who have each forged a singular path
within and beyond the realm of jazz.
While rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area scene, Amendola has woven a dense and far-
reaching web of bandstand relationships that tie him to influential artists in jazz, blues, rock and
new music. A potent creative catalyst, the Berkeley-based drummer is the nexus for a disparate
community of musicians stretching from Los Angeles and Seattle to Chicago and New York.
Whatever the context, Amendola possesses a gift for twisting musical genres in unexpected
directions.
Nels Cline maintains his long-running role in the alt-rock juggernaut Wilco, but the band’s long
stretches of inactivity mean that he can also perform as a member of the Scott Amendola Band
and a recently launched duo project (a tête-à-tête setting in which Scott thrives). Amendola
continues to tour and record with the volatile instrumental band, The Nels Cline Singers, which
released the acclaimed 2020 Blue Note album Share the Wealth, following up 2014’s critically
hailed, genre-obliterating Macroscope (Mack Avenue). It’s not surprising that the Singers
provided an early and essential forum for Amendola’s artful use of electronics, a small
menagerie of devices that has found its way “into everything I do,” Amendola says. “After years
of experimenting I’m using them in a more expressive and confident way than ever before.”
Amendola established his reputation as a bandleader in 1999 with the release of the acclaimed
album Scott Amendola Band featuring the unusual instrumentation of Eric Crystal on
saxophones, Todd Sickafoose on acoustic bass, Jenny Scheinman on violin, and Dave Mac
Nab on electric guitar. By the time the quintet returned to the studio in 2003, Cline had replaced
Mac Nab, contributing to the quintet’s combustible chemistry on the Cryptogramophone album
Cry.
Cline was a crucial contributor on Amendola’s 2005 Cryptogramophone album Believe, which
also features guitarist Jeff Parker (from the band Tortoise), Jenny Scheinman, and late bassist
John Shifflett. Scott created his own label, SAZi Records, for his next release, 2010’s exquisite
Lift, a trio session with Parker and Shifflett dedicated to his gossamer, bluesy ballads and
ethereal soundscapes, with an occasional foray into surf rock deconstruction.
No project better displays Amendola’s big ears and musical ambitions than Fade To Orange a
piece commissioned as part of the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s Irvine Foundation-funded
New Visions/New Vistas Initiative. The roiling work premiered to critical acclaim at Oakland’s
Paramount Theater on April 15, 2011. Determined to refine and document the piece, Amendola
conducted a successful PledgeMusic crowd-funding campaign and recorded Fade To Orange at
Berkeley’s storied Fantasy Studios with his original collaborators—his Nels Cline Singers
bandmates (Cline and powerhouse bassist Trevor Dunn)—and the great Magik*Magik
Orchestra.
“The idea was really the Singers meet the Symphony,” Amendola says. “I wanted Trevor’s
electric bass for that big contrast with the orchestra, and I conceived of the piece as a concerto
for guitar. It was an amazing experience to premiere ‘Fade to Orange’ at the Paramount, but it
was bittersweet after all that work. Like, that’s it? I wanted to see what else we could do with it.”
He released Fade to Orange on CD and vinyl on his label Sazi Records in 2015. The album
includes four distilled, wildly imaginative remixes of “Fade to Orange” by Cibo Matto’s Yuka
Honda, Mocean Worker, Beautiful Bells, and Deerhoof’s John Dieterich and Teetotum’s Drake
Hardin.
In some circles, Amendola is best known for his intermittent two-decade collaboration with
seven-string guitar wizard Charlie Hunter, with whom he connected shortly after moving to the
Bay Area in 1992. They went on to play together with John Schott and Will Bernard in the three-
guitar-and-drums combo T.J. Kirk, which earned a Grammy nomination for its eponymous 1996
debut album. After years of occasional gigs, they teamed up again in 2011 in a tough and
sinewy duo. They spent five years touring incessantly and released two acclaimed albums:
2012’s recession-inspired Not Getting Behind is the New Getting Ahead and 2013’s Pucker, the
latter showcases Amendola’s melodically inspired tunes.
In 2014, looking for new avenues to distribute their music, Hunter and Amendola released four
5-track EPs, each focusing on the music of a particular artist or act. From the standards of
Ellington and Cole Porter to the country hits of Hank Williams and seminal new wave tunes of
The Cars, the duo transformed everything they encountered with their groove-centric sensibility.
As a sideman, Amendola has performed and recorded with a vast, stylistically varied roster of
artists, including Bill Frisell, Regina Carter, John Zorn, Mike Patton, Mondo Cane, John Scofield,
Pat Metheny, Laurie Anderson, Cibo Matto, David Torn, Michael Manring, Deerhoof’s John
Dieterich, Wadada Leo Smith, Bruce Cockburn, Madeleine Peyroux, Cris Williamson, Joan
Osborne, Jacky Terrasson, Shweta Jhaveri, Phil Lesh, Sex Mob, Kelly Joe Phelps, Larry Klein,
Carla Bozulich, Wayne Horvitz, Johnny Griffin, Julian Priester, Sonny Simmons, Pat Martino,
Jim Campilongo, Bobby Black, Larry Goldings, Paul McCandless, Rebecca Pidgeon, and the
Joe Goode Dance Group.
Born and raised in the New Jersey suburb of Tenafly, just a stone’s throw from New York City,
Amendola displayed an aptitude for rhythm almost from the moment he could walk. His
grandfather, Tony Gottuso, was a highly respected guitarist who performed with jazz luminaries
such as Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and Nat “King” Cole. A member of the
original Tonight Show Band under Steve Allen, he offered plenty of support when Amendola
began to get interested in jazz. “We used to play together a lot when I was a teenager,”
Amendola says. “It had a huge impact on me to play with someone who was around when a lot
of the standards that musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Keith Jarrett play were
written.”
His passion for music only deepened during his four years at Boston’s venerable Berklee
College of Music, where it wasn’t unusual for him to practice for 12 hours a day. Drawing
inspiration from fellow students such as Jorge Rossi, Jim Black, Jay Bellerose, Danilo Perez,
Chris Cheek, and Mark Turner, and studying with the likes of Joe Hunt, and Tommy Campbell,
Amendola found his own voice rather than modeling himself after established drummers. Since
2014, Scott has served as Associate Professor at the University of California – Berkeley’s Jazz
Program. His teaching in jazz percussion focuses on private instruction.
Over a career spanning more than three decades, Amendola has forged deep ties across the
country, and throughout the world. As an ambitious composer, savvy bandleader, electronics
explorer, first-call accompanist, and capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most
inventive musicians, Amendola applies his wide-ranging rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of
settings. He’s never more than one degree away from a powerful musical hook-up.