Scott St. John, a violinist from London, Ontario, was a member of the St. Lawrence String Quartet for the past seven years. He recently moved back to London with his wife Sharon Wei and daughter Julia.
Scott made his Carnegie debut in 1988 after winning 1st prize in the Alexander Schneider Competition; he has also won the Young Concert Artists Award. He has since played an enormous variety of concerts across North America, including solo appearances with orchestras, recitals and chamber music. In spring 2003, he was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant from Lincoln Center in New York.
From 1999 – 2006, Scott was Associate Professor of Violin at University of Toronto, and founded the Felix Galimir Chamber Music Award for U of T students. From 2006 – 2013, he maintained an intense touring schedule with the St. Lawrence Quartet, and enjoyed the quartet’s unique residency at Stanford University in California. SLSQ traveled all over the US, and visited Korea, China, Finland, Estonia, Germany, Holland, Italy and Colombia with programs ranging from Haydn to R. Murray Schafer. With a strong commitment to new music, SLSQ presented a new John Adams work in 2012 titled “Absolute Jest” for String Quartet and Orchestra, with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony.
Scott maintains an ongoing relationship with the Marlboro Music Festival, including summers in Vermont and national tours with Musicians From Marlboro. His solo recordings include an all-Dvorak CD, a disc featuring Poulenc and Martinu with pianist Rena Sharon, and 2 volumes of Paganini works for violin and guitar. A recent recording of Mozart’s Symphonia Concertante with his sister Lara St. John won a Juno Award for best recording: solo with orchestra.
Scott is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied violin with David Cerone, Arnold Steinhardt, and chamber music with Felix Galimir. Childhood teachers Richard Lawrence and David Cerone were huge influences and mentors. Scott lived in New York City for most of the 1990s, and enjoys telling the story about taking a violin “sabbatical”. For a year, Scott worked daytime in an office, and nights at the Disney Store in Times Square.
Other interests include early American violinmaker J. B. Squier, early American composers, Canadian composers, rail travel, urban transit, running, and local organic food.