Stephen Scott was born in Corvallis, Oregon, in 1944 to scientifically trained parents who were also talented amateur musicians. Early study of music included tutoring in recorder in Bristol, England, clarinet and saxophone in elementary and secondary school bands, and private study and transcription of recordings by Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson and John Coltrane in high school. Formal training in composition was at the University of Oregon and Brown University, with field studies in African music undertaken in Ghana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe in 1970. Scott is professor of music at Colorado College. He has served on the faculty of The Evergreen State College and as visiting composer at the Aspen Music School, New England Conservatory, Princeton University, University of Southern California, and at several universities and conservatoria in Australia. Awards have included the New England Conservatory/Rockefeller Foundation Chamber Music Prize (1980) and a National Endowment for the Arts Composers' Fellowship (1985-86). Scott is listed in New Grove's Dictionary of American Music and Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, and his work is discussed in several books on twentieth-century music. His bowed piano composition "The Tears of Niobe" represented the United States at the 1991 Internatioinal Rostrum of Composers in Paris.