Scott Flynn | The Avant-Gardener.
- Isobel Arden
- Aug 7
- 7 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
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Meet Scott Flynn.
In this interview, Mark created Scott Flynn's fantasy cultural year from the answers to some easy questions to which there were no wrong answers.
Mark had a magic wand and a time machine at his disposal, so expect some surprises, laughs, anecdotes and conversational detours.
There are musicians who play one instrument, musicians who write music and musicians who teach. Scott Flynn has apparently decided that would be far too straightforward.
Originally from the New York area and now based in London, Scott Flynn is a trombonist, composer, producer, bandleader, improviser, performer, educator and author whose career has moved comfortably between jazz, electronic music, reggae, hip-hop, funk, classical influences and the territory of avant-garde and improvised music.
His main instrument is the trombone, although his work extends into electronic instruments, production and other musical tools. In his own words, he is, fairly simply, “a musician” — which turns out to be doing rather a lot of work.
Scott studied Performance, Production and Orchestration at Berklee College of Music and has also studied with Joe Lovano and Hal Crook. His professional career has taken him across the United States, Australia, Asia, New Zealand, Canada, Africa, Europe and South America, giving him the slightly unusual problem of having accumulated enough musical experiences to make answering the question “What do you do?” rather difficult.
One of the most recognisable chapters of Scott's career has been his work with ODESZA. He joined the critically acclaimed electronic duo in 2016 and has performed with them around the world, including on their The Last Goodbye touring cycle. His playing sits inside a much larger live production, where brass, electronic music, visual design and large-scale performance all have to work together.
Scott has also performed, toured and recorded with a remarkably broad collection of artists and projects. His credits include Pretty Lights, Lauryn Hill, Jimmy Heath, Big Daddy Kane, Marcus Miller, Michel Camilo, Bob Mintzer, The Nth Power, The Black Seeds, Chris Karns and Michael Ray of Sun Ra, among many others.
His own projects reveal that same curiosity. Scott writes and produces music with Elephant Wrecking Ball, an instrumental, electronic, trombone-led power trio whose sound pulls together jazz, hip-hop, electro and avant-garde music. Rather fittingly, the band's description talks about combining discipline with musical exploration: there is technique underneath the experimentation, rather than experimentation being used as an excuse to forget where the notes are.
Scott's musical interests also extend into reggae and dub. His work with Death by Dub grew out of his long-standing involvement with reggae music and his connection with Dan Africano, with whom he had previously spent years immersed in the world of dub and reggae through John Brown's Body.
There is also a playful contradiction running through Scott's musical identity. He is highly interested in open, free and exploratory music, yet he is equally fascinated by the precision and architecture of composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach.
For Scott, experimentation and discipline do not seem to be opposites. They are two ways of asking the same question: what happens if you really pay attention to the music?
That question carries into his work as an educator.
Scott has increasingly moved into music education alongside his performing and composing career, including an online trombone mentorship programme. His teaching focuses on practical musical development, including tone, range, endurance, technique and knowing what to practise rather than simply practising more.
His teaching website positions him as a mentor for trombone players and independent musicians, with resources and masterclasses including a trombone method book designed to make the process of improving an instrument less mysterious for musicians across different levels.
That combination of performer, teacher and author is useful because Scott's career has never really been about keeping musical knowledge locked inside the performance itself.
He has spent years figuring out how musicians work, how performers develop, how different musical languages overlap and how technique can support rather than restrict creativity. His education work turns some of those observations into tools other musicians can actually use.
Scott Flynn's Fantasy Cultural Year ... with a magic wand and a time machine to hand.
Every Arts and Culture Network member is invited to embark on a Fantasy Cultural Year—an imaginary twelve-month journey designed around their passions, curiosity and imagination.
Scott Flynn's Fantasy Cultural Year begins, appropriately, with a problem: he is asked to choose one favourite building.
One.
This turns out to be optimistic.
His instinct is to think about venues — places where music actually happens. Beautiful outdoor spaces immediately come to mind: Red Rocks in Colorado, the Gorge in Washington State and festivals surrounded by nature. Then there are the large venues that somehow still feel intimate, such as Hampton Coliseum, alongside Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. For smaller rooms, there is Blue Note and Ronnie Scott's.
Eventually, Red Rocks wins.
It is June, six o'clock on a Friday evening, and Scott is sitting in the audience waiting for a concert. There is a drink on the table. Scott's first choices are an excellent IPA or a high-quality single-origin iced coffee. The IPA gets the final vote.
There is also a book.
The book is connected to Scott's mentor Art Landy and Mark Miller and explores the process of freely improvising and making music.
A wealthy Arizona family foundation has decided to fund Scott for an entire year to travel around the world, collaborating with musicians from different cultures and musical backgrounds. A film crew will follow him, recording the journey for a documentary. There will be a book deal afterwards, a TED talk, a university lecture tour and first-class travel.
Scott's first destination is New York.
On the flight, the foundation gives him one final challenge: for the entire year, he can only listen to one type of music. For someone who loves music across genres, this is cruel. Scott eventually chooses avant-garde music, somewhere in the Venn diagram between improvisation, jazz and experimental music. Sun Ra is the tempting alternative. In reality, Sun Ra is probably going to sneak into the year anyway.
New York welcomes him with a group of young musicians and an apartment overlooking Central Park. His first cultural stop is a performance by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Scott admits that dance is not his strongest area of expertise, but he is drawn to the company's combination of strong fundamentals and contemporary, exploratory movement.
Dinner is Japanese.
From New York, Scott considers Berlin and Tokyo before deciding to begin with Berlin.
It is Sport Day.
Scott is not particularly a sports obsessive, which makes the decision more entertaining than it might otherwise be. He considers Ultimate Frisbee, and as luck would have it, the World Championships happen to be taking place in Berlin.
Then it is Tokyo.
Scott arrives at a beautiful loft overlooking a cherry orchard and a palace before heading to an immersive digital art gallery. The experience allows visitors to step inside the work of a famous artist using virtual reality. Scott chooses Wassily Kandinsky.
The idea of physically entering a painting, with movement and sound as part of the experience, seems particularly suited to someone who spends so much time thinking about how different art forms interact.
Eventually, the magic wand sends Scott back to London.
Monday is music night.
With a time machine available, Scott chooses Sun Ra, an artist who has had a significant influence on his musical thinking and someone he never had the opportunity to see perform live.
Tuesday is theatre.
Scott wants Shakespeare — properly. He has seen some productions but wants the chance to experience the depth and breadth of Shakespeare's writing more fully. Measure for Measure becomes the choice.
Wednesday is musical theatre.
Les Misérables. Scott admits he is a sucker for it, so there is no need to overthink the decision.
Thursday is opera or ballet.
Opera wins. He knows some of the classics but freely admits that he is not an opera expert. That, however, is rather the point of the Fantasy Cultural Year: there is room to explore things you already understand and things you don't.
Friday is film night.
The destination is the Sphere in Las Vegas. The choice is 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It is a particularly good fit for the giant screen, the immersive environment and, of course, the music. Scott chooses Stanley Kubrick's famously strange and visually ambitious science-fiction film without needing much persuasion.
Then comes the final lunch.
A Japanese restaurant in London. Scott can invite one hero, living or dead, real or fictional. Scott decides on Johann Sebastian Bach. And this choice might reveal more about Scott than any of the others.
He is fascinated by Bach's precision — the feeling that not a note is out of place — but also by how alive the music remains. Scott talks about the possibility of taking the same music, changing the tempo, changing the emotional character, putting it into a computer as MIDI, and somehow still finding something extraordinary underneath it.
Scott's contact details
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Mark Walmsley FRSA FCIM AGSM
Chief Culture Vulture
Arts & Culture Network
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