Scott Pembleton at the
Roland Scott
Pembleton at the 1891 Bell Pump
Organ
Born
and raised in Guelph Ontario, Scott started his academic Grade 1 and Royal
Conservatory of Music Grade 1 in the same year. His music teachers quickly
identified and encouraged his play-by-ear talent and he went on to
simultaneously complete his academic Grade 10 and his Royal Conservatory Grade
10.
Wanting to broaden his keyboard training Scott taught
himself to play the organ and started playing with a Farfisa single keyboard
organ with John Hamilton’s band. Over the last 35 years Scott owned and played a
variety of electronic organs.
For almost 10 years Scott played with Bill Weber, Gil
Taves, and Hans Melchers at
Over the years he also played a
regular dinner music ‘gig’ at the Charcoal Steak House in
By the mid 1990s Scott had enough
of carting his equipment to gigs and wanted to spend more time coaching his son
Ryan’s baseball team and watching his daughter Meghan’s dance recitals. To keep
his fingers limber several times a year Scott and fellow Guelphite, John
Solberg, played as a duo for organ clubs in
On September 9, 2001 Scott’s life and music was forever changed. He suffered seizures and a brain injury when
an Arterial Venous Malformation (AVM) burst in his left frontal lobe and
damaged part of his temporal and parietal lobes. After his surgery Scott had
to relearn his hand-eye coordination. He knew what he was supposed to do
technically, but couldn’t always make his hand and arm go where he wanted them
to go. Scott now laughingly says, “For quite a while I held the toothbrush in my
right hand and moved my head back and forth to brush my teeth.”
It wasn’t until medication stopped the seizures in June
2003, and he was given an electronic piano, that Scott began to use the keyboards for his therapy. When he first
started he couldn’t bend his ring and baby fingers on his right hand. “My brain
would send a message to those fingers and not only wouldn’t they bend, they
wouldn’t even go to the right keys,” he said.Over the last four years Scott has gradually regained
limited use of those fingers and is building new pathways for his brain to send
messages to his fingers.
Short and long term memory losses and continuing medical
complications have continued to challenge Scott’s keyboard skills. “Sometimes I
can hear parts of some of the songs in my head but when I go to play them, I hit
the wrong note, or I can’t remember how to finish, or I jump to another song
that’s in the same key,” he said frustratingly. “At other times I can only sit
and play for maybe 10 minutes before exhaustion sets in.”
Now living in
Scott dedicates his performance to anyone who has ever had
to struggle to overcome an injury, a disability or even wondered how to reach
the light at the end of the tunnel. “The answer to how to reach that light,” he
said, “is to hold on to the knowledge that one finger, one key, one chord, one
step at a time, will get you there.”
Although he continues to face health and physical
challenges, he reflects on his 50 years of keyboard playing with gratitude:
gratitude for his musical knowledge; for the teachers and musicians who inspired
him; for the love of his children and family; and gratitude for the audiences
and “all the nice people I’ve met” at the keyboards.
“Stay tuned.”
C. Scott
Pembleton
November,
2007
See
and listen to a video
of Scott playing the O Christmas Tree and Angels We Have Heard
on the 1891 Bell Pump Organ.
See and listen
to a video of Scott playing Amazing Grace and Abide with Me at the Roland
KR-5 and the 1891 Bell Pump Organ. All tracks including the oboe, strings
and chimes were sequenced on the Roland by Scott Pembleton.