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. 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.
Dana Reason is a Canadian-born composer, pianist and sonic artist.
Reason recently co-produced Cinema’s First Nasty Women Compilation Soundtrack Vol. 1 (Kino Lorber, Aug. 2023) with Grammy award winning musician, founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, Terri Lyne Carrington. This soundtrack features 18+ diverse female composers written for the 4DVD (Cinema’s First Nasty Women) of 99 archival films (2022). Reason was also the arranger for the award winning Reconstruction: America After the Civil War Series, produced by Henry Louis Gates (PBS, 2019). Reason has written music for two feature length archival films including: Back to God’s Country (Kino) and The Snowbird (Kino) as well as music for several shorts produced by Kino Lorber. She has recorded over 20 commercially released music projects for labels including: Mode Records, Red Toucan, Deep Listening, 482 Music, Circumvention, and Kino Lorber, and more. Performing and Recording highlights include: Joëlle Léandre, Joe McPhee, Cecil Taylor, Marco Eneidi, Lori Goldston, Peter Valsamis, Yves Charuest, George E. Lewis, Kyle Bruckmann, Mark Dresser, Roscoe Mitchell, Lori Freedman, John Heward, Shahzad Ismaily, Matt Brubeck, Mary Oliver, Catherine Lee, Pauline Oliveros, Gabby Fluke Mogul, Todd Sickafoose, Kevin Patton, Nicolas Caloia, Paul Miller, Mike Gamble, John Savage, Philip Gelb, Barre Phillips, and Andrew Drury.
In addition to composing, music supervising and performing, Reason writes about creative intercultural music practices, feminist improvisatory and sound studies practices, and has either published or been reviewed by the following: Routledge, Oxford University Press, Columbia University Jazz Studies Online, University of Chicago Press, National Geographic, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Wesleyan University Press, Downbeat, Jazziz, All Music, and Musicworks. Reason is currently an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Music at Oregon State University.
Peter Valsamis is a Los Angeles-based drummer/percussionist/composer/sound designer. His unique approach to drumming synthesizes a variety of musical styles into his own unique sound. He has performed with Trance Mission, Emeline Michel, Martine St. Clair, Mitsou, Cecil Taylor, Don Preston, Walter Aziz, Dana Reason, Steve Lacy, and many others. Peter is also an accomplished composer and sound designer, working on titles such as Transformers, Star Trek, Battleship, The Price is Right, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune. Peter received his M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College.
Alex Callenberger – Guitar
Portland, OR based guitarist, synth wizard and cinematic expressionist, Alex Callenberger creates soundscapes to dream and swim through. Calling on the powers of electric guitar, live looping, electronic and experimental instruments, he casts sonic spells that straddle and bind the genres of ambient, down-tempo, experimental, psych and folk-minimalism. Alex has performed with Michael Gamble, David Torn, Ryan Albert Miller and others in the Avant/Experimental realm.
Bernstein, Callenberger, Miller & Warren – A group of sonic expressionists, bending the aural walls of the unknown universe. Ambient avant drone spectacles with splashes of chaos and symmetry. Experimental, delicate, diabolical and always unpredictable.
Noah Bernstein – Saxophone
Alex Callenberger – Guitar
Ryan Albert Miller – Guitar
Brandon Warren – Drum
