Campus Currents

Musical Artist Brings Baroque into New Century

Kraig Scott didn’t set out to become an organist. But he did have an intense interest in music and wanted to make a lot of it. This passion eventually led him to an instrument with multiple keyboards, many sound combinations, and the chance to play some of the most beautiful music ever composed.

“Many people don’t realize that there has been more music composed for pipe organ than for any other instrument—a repertoire spanning almost 700 years,” says Scott, a music professor at Walla Walla College since 1986. “And this includes lots of music by the greatest composers that ever lived. There is always more music that I wish I had more time to learn.”

Over the past two years Scott’s interest in learning and sharing organ music has taken him on study tours to Sweden, Holland, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, as well as on concert tours to the West Coast (from Eugene, Ore., to Anchorage, Alaska), Salt Lake City, New Jersey, Canada, Germany, and Holland. This interest has recently resulted in the production of a new CD of organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

“I’m fond of music from all eras, but I have been performing a lot of baroque music in the last few months,” says Scott. This past summer he co-founded a new arts organization in Walla Walla with Robert Bode, a Whitman College music professor. “The goal for Walla Walla Baroque is to allow people in the region to hear the beauty of Baroque music on original period instruments.” For October’s inaugural concert at First Congregational Church, Scott, on harpsichord, was joined by Salt Lake City’s Lissa Wildman on flauto traverso and Seattle’s Ronnee Fullerton on viola da gamba. “We had a great turnout for our first concert with both colleges represented and lots of people from the Walla Walla Valley.”

Also in October, Scott performed the annual All-Bach recital at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle. He based the recital on Bach’s chorale variations entitled “O God Thou Faithful God.” “The concept for this recital was unusual,” says Scott. “By incorporating in the program the words of various hymns set by Bach, I wanted to allow him to preach us a sermon about how faithful God is, even at those times when it seems God isn’t near.” Scott’s concept attracted the interest of Seattle’s classical music station, king 98.1 FM, which aired an interview with him the day before the concert.

Also this fall, in addition to his normal teaching schedule, Scott has kept busy finishing up a new CD titled “SDG,” an acronym for “Soli Deo Gloria.” These three letters, or the entire Latin phrase meaning “To God alone be glory,” appears on many manuscripts by J. S. Bach, the composer of all the music featured on the recording. W

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