Bio
Aidan Scrimgeour is a musician, composer and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Growing up in Salem, MA, Aidan was inspired by the energy and talent of the local North Shore music scene and started performing locally at restaurants and clubs as a teenager. He began working with local jazz and funk bands under the mentorship of Henley Douglas (Boston Horns). After spending a couple years in the Contemporary Improvisation Program at New England Conservatory studying piano performance with Ran Blake and Hankus Netsky, he graduated with a B.A. in Performance & Representation from Tufts University.
In 2020, along with Roy Nathanson of the Jazz Passengers, he co-founded the Brooklyn Porch Music Program, an educational and performance collective that emerged from their daily ritualistic concerts throughout the early months of the pandemic. This program provides free music lessons, ensembles and writing workshops for youth in South Brooklyn. Aidan leads the Multigenerational Playing for the Light Big Band, an ensemble of musicians of all abilities and ages that performs the original music and poetry of Brooklyn teens. Adjacent to this program is an album project entitled 82 Days with Nathanson that Aidan co-produced and played keyboards on.
Aidan’s wide range of musical interests stretch from jazz to various folk musics to musical theater. He is the accordionist and songwriter for Pumpkin Bread, a Boston-based new acoustic band, which has been featured on "A Celtic Sojourn" on WGBH and Brian O’Donavan’s backroom series. The band’s second album “Dear Starling” was released in 2019 and produced by Courtney Hartman of Della Mae. He was the composer and musical director for the original musical Only Human, which premiered at Ames Hall in Salem. In New York, Aidan regularly performs and tours with several groups ranging from big band jazz to honky-tonk country to acoustic folk and singer-songwriter projects. His jazz trio recently completed a tour of the Northeast which featured a performance in Distler Hall (Medford) and raised over one-thousand dollars for various local charities.
Coming from a family of public educators, teaching has always been an important part of Aidan’s musical life. In addition to his work with the Brooklyn Porch Music, he works at South Shore High School, Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School and has a studio of private piano students ranging in age from 8 to 75. In his teaching, he focuses on composition and improvisation, prioritizing student creativity, development of musical community and cultivation of an original musical voice.
Aidan’s playing adds a supportive warmth and playfulness to the various projects he is a part of, while consistently demonstrating a deep knowledge of a variety of traditions and communicating the joy of music. In the words of Roy Nathanson, “the gentle and generous spirit of Aidan’s piano playing leaves you underestimating his remarkable attention to detail and the complexity of his melodic and harmonic ideas. I have been lucky to have played with some amazing players and composers in my 70 years and I can say that Aidan Scrimgeour is a very, very special musician.”