Scott Routenberg
Associate Professor of Music Performance (Jazz Piano)
Dr. Scott Routenberg enjoys a versatile and prolific career as an award-winning jazz pianist, composer, arranger and orchestrator. In 2004, Routenberg was the first jazz songwriter to win the prestigious John Lennon Songwriting Contest Maxell Song of the Year. Other awards and honors include The ASCAP Foundation/Symphonic Jazz Orchestra Commissioning Prize (2016), the SONIC Award for Best Arrangement at the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers Symposium (2017), the ASCAP David Rose Scholarship, Composer Scholar at the Henry Mancini Institute in Los Angeles, the ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award (three-time winner), participant in the ASCAP Television and Film Scoring Workshop, and the Downbeat Student Award for Best Extended Length Composition.
Hailed as a "rising-star pianist" who has "found his own voice in the modern mainstream” (JAZZIZ), Routenberg has performed with internationally renowned jazz musicians the likes of Howard Levy, Jeff Coffin and Christian Howes and has opened for jazz guitar legend John Scofield. Jazz festival and club performances include the Montreux Jazz Festival, Jazz à Vienne, the North Sea Jazz Festival, Indy Jazz Fest, Elkhart Jazz Fest, the Gainesville Jazz Festival, The Green Mill (Chicago), The Jazz Kitchen (Indianapolis), The Velvet Note (Atlanta), Rudy's Jazz Room (Nashville), The Home Smith Bar at the Old Mill (Toronto, Canada), The Palladium (Carmel, IN), and The Biltmore Hotel (Coral Gables). The Scott Routenberg Trio's debut album on Summit Records, Every End is a Beginning (2017), reached #65 on the JazzWeek radio chart, #33 on the Roots Music Report Top 50 Jazz Albums, and was named Jazz Album of the Week by soulandjazz.com. The Creative Source's Dr. Brad Stone calls the album "an early candidate for jazz record of the year." The trio's latest album, SUPERMOON (2018, Summit Records) has received critical praise as "a work of unified expression from a charismatic trio...with substantial moments of gratification" (Jazz Trail, New York City). Jazz Weekly describes the album as "a decalogue of Routenberg's compositions...rich in lyricism," declaring that "the modern jazz piano trio is alive and well." SUPERMOON received wide airplay on dozens of jazz stations nationwide and abroad, including Jazz on PRI's "Jazz After Hours," the Jazz Network (Chicago) and The Creative Source.
Scott’s jazz piano teachers include Ted Howe (Berklee), Brazilian legend Manfredo Fest (Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66), Chip Crawford (Grammy Award winning pianist for Gregory Porter) and Vince Maggio (student of Oscar Peterson and roommate of Bill Evans). His composition and arranging teachers include Gary Lindsay, Ron Miller and Raul Murciano, Jr. Routenberg is a graduate of the University of Miami Frost School of Music and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Since 2011, Routenberg has received multiple commissions as an arranger for the Grammy Winning Metropole Orkest under both Vince Mendoza and Jules Buckley, and has had orchestral premieres by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, among many others. Commissions include multiple big band arrangements for Grammy-winning harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy, The Jeremy Monteiro Big Band, the New York Youth Symphony Jazz Band Classic, and Routenberg's internationally popular Concerto for Jazz Violin and Orchestra. World premieres include Austria, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Poland, Norway, China, Singapore, Thailand and Russia. Domestic premieres include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Fox Newman Scoring Stage in Los Angeles (ASCAP Television and Film Scoring Workshop). Notable jazz artists such as Ernie Watts, Carmen Bradford, Howard Levy, Christian Howes, Billy Contreras, Troy Roberts (Joey DeFrancesco), Brandon Wright (Mingus Big Band) and Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver) have performed and recorded Routenberg’s compositions and arrangements.
Dr. Routenberg is currently Associate Professor of Jazz Piano at Ball State University, where he teaches applied undergraduate and graduate jazz piano and improvisation lessons, Jazz Improvisation 1 and 2, Jazz History, Jazz Composition, Jazz Piano Lab, and directs a jazz combo. He is also the recipient of the 2018-2019 College of Fine Arts Dean's Creative Endeavor Award for the School of Music. Dr. Routenberg served on the jury for the prestigious American Pianists Association Jazz Piano Competition Premiere Series (2018-2019), where he helped choose the $100,000 Cole Porter Fellowship winner, one of the most coveted prizes in the music world and the largest for jazz pianists. Routenberg has presented jazz masterclasses and recitals at Coastal Carolina University, Belmont University, the University of South Florida, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Jazz Artist in Residence) and Eastern Washington University. Routenberg is an active member of many professional music associations, including ASCAP, the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers (ISJAC), the Jazz Education Network (JEN), the Society of Composers (SCI), the College Music Society (CMS), NAfME, and the Indiana Jazz Educators Association (IJEA), for which he has served multiple times as the Jazz Piano Judge for the All-State Jazz Bands and has composed etudes for all auditioning instruments. Routenberg's jazz wind quintet Headwinds was chosen for performance at the 2015 College Music Society National Conference in Indianapolis and the TUTTI Original Works Festival in Ohio. As a jazz educator, Routenberg has taught at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, Miami-Dade College (Kendall), and the University of South Florida. Routenberg's Doctoral Essay “Americana Suite: A Composition for Full Orchestra, Big Band and Jazz Chamber Ensembles Inspired by American Master Paintings” (2008) is published by ProQuest.
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