performer

A versatile guitarist who doubles on the unusual fretless classical and acoustic lap steel guitars, Scott Sandvik’s playing synthesizes various elements of his diverse background, including scholarship and teaching of African American folk music and the composition of microtonal classical works. His performances of original aural transcriptions and recompositions of African American roots music—incorporating contemporary compositional elements like counterpoint and the modern 72-note microtonal scale—show reverence for the original, while exploring them creatively.

Intrigued by the sounds derived from tuning systems other than the familiar “piano scale” (the Western 12-note equal-tempered scale), Sandvik learned the 72-note microtonal scale devised by Cambridge composer Ezra Sims in Joe Maneri’s class in microtonal music at New England Conservatory in 1987. Two years later, while teaching his Black American Folk Music course, Sandvik discovered field recordings of early African-American a cappella vocal forms (“surge” hymns, hollers, spirituals, lullabies, game songs) that used microtonal modes. He now draws on both tuning systems in order to accurately transcribe the a cappella vocal melodies to guitar, while at the same time extending the material through the use of counterpoint and improvisation.

In this way, Sandvik creates unique aural recompositions of original recordings by artists from the 1920’s, like slide guitarists Charley Patton and Blind Willie Johnson and vocalist Rev. J. M. Gates. He also taps the wealth of field recordings documented in the 1950’s by the legendary cultural anthropologist Alan Lomax, Frederic Ramsey, Jr., Harold Courlander and others. These include a cappella vocal performances of “surge” hymns by John and Lovie Griffins and Suddie Griffins, spirituals by Mrs. Sidney Carter and Horace Sprott, hollers by Annie Grace Horn Dodson and Vera Hall, as well as vocal-slide guitar performances of spirituals by Blind Willie Johnson and Fred McDowell. Since all of these recorded performances use notes outside those on a normal fretted guitar, Sandvik uses a fretless classical guitar, an acoustic lap steel guitar, as well as fretless banjo to more accurately reproduce the microtonal intervals and vocal nuances of the originals.

In 2000, Sandvik performed this music on the soundtrack of Beth Harrington’s Grammy-nominated PBS documentary Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly and released his solo guitar debut, Open Field on his bluesurge label.

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