Kevin Sparks
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Vento brass artist and caring teacher, K. Scot Sparks (‘Mr. K’) was born and raised in Bloomingdale, in northern New Jersey. There he studied, among others, with Ron Waiksnoris - whose late seventies Dennis Wick – into – Getzen Capri Cornet, ‘liquid gold’ tone would always haunt him : ). He's performed in many ensembles, some of which under the batons of brass band greats like Derek Smith, Jim Williams, and Charlie Baker. As a youth, Sparks received Star Lake Musicamp’s coveted Cornet Award. He's been privileged, also, to have sessions with many profound artists such as Philip Smith, Bobby Bryant Jr., Rob Haight, and the impeccable Marquis Hill. Most typically, Sparks now performs as a liturgical and as a jazz trumpeter. Eighty plus samples of his compositional work, including music for short films, can be heard at alonetone.com/kscotsparks and at SoundCloud. Throughout the last decade Sparks has developed a “Socratic critique” for fine arts students, gradually including his Linea e Colore Reconciled and Be the Bop seminars (based largely on J. S. Bach’s famous Unaccompanied Cello Suites, the famous Omnibook of Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker, and their fruitful interaction in growing musicality). Here he’d uniquely study and share art, music, and 'active/performative criticism' with students of every age and development level - in somewhat of a Tai Chi mode. Seminar themes relate to the well-paced reconciling of pitch and tone, tone and phrase, melody and harmony, contemporary and ancient, form and content, discipline and joy, solo and ensemble, skill and sensibility, the athletic and the aesthetic, the personal and the collective, etc., etc. An active artist-thinker affiliated, among others, with the faculty at St. Catherine Dominican College, he has additionally taught studio art, interdisciplinary honors, critical thinking, fine arts seminars, and worked as a lecturer-clinician, the latter at such places as the Contemporary Music Center on Martha’s Vineyard. Often performing as an inter-genre instrumentalist/producer/composer, Sparks has also accomplished commissions and other projects, from performance exhibitions to music for short film. He has variously exhibited, performed, painted, and researched in such places as Prague, Dresden, Vienna, Brno, Budapest, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Paris, Boston, Athens, Mitelene, Pergamon, Mombasa, Chikankata, Victoria Falls, Los Angeles, San Juan, Chicago, Waco, and Addis-Ababa. < Go Back |