Scott Tennant '86


Being a guitar prodigy in a family where all the men were ex-Marines wasn’t easy. Though his father, a Detroit hotel manager, was proud of his musical son, “no one was taking me around like a little Mozart,” Scott Tennant snips. Being a hockey and weight-lifting jock didn’t mitigate the fact that “I spent a good portion of my life hiding my long thumbnail in junior high.” But Tennant can’t remember a time when he wasn’t playing guitar. By 13, he was taking lessons from Segovia-trained master Joe Fava (“who spent the lessons with his hand inside his shirt, rubbing his ulcer,” Tennant reflects guiltily).

The acknowledged Wunderkind of the LAGQ, in 1989 Tennant became the first American to win the Tokyo International Guitar Competition. (The $5,000 prize, he says, “saved my life. I was so broke!”) Tennant, the recording artist, has five solo CDs, among them Wild Mountain Thyme, a nod to his father’s Scottish roots; and Rodrigo: Complete Guitar Works, an ambitious three-part project (Vol. 1 was released in 1996, Vol. 2 just came out in February). There’s a good reason why the blind composer-pianist’s complete guitar cycle has only been attempted once before. Rodrigo wrote some near-unplayable guitar music, like his “Entre Olivares.” It took Tennant a year to bring that piece up to tempo. Even so, he had to record it in stages: “I have a pretty relaxed hand, but it was shot after just three takes,” he says. Future recording projects include the complete solos of Torroba; a Renaissance program (“that’s really my favorite stuff”); a Baroque sampler of Tennant’s own transcriptions of the Bach cello and violin suites; and a compilation of new music written for Tennant by various composers. The abundance of raw material makes up for Tennant’s deficiency as a composer. His lone opus to date is best described as Celtic reel-meets-Indian raga. “It was one of those inspirational things. I just had to get it out of my system,” he says.

The only thing Tennant enjoys more than playing is teaching others to play. “You deal with a lot of personal issues, which I kind of like,” he says. “I enjoy coaching people.” Except for a four-year hiatus teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory, Tennant has always been affiliated with USC.

His catchy-titled handbook has become the technical Bible of classical guitar students. As a teenager steeped in the weight-lifting culture of Pumping Iron, Tennant had joked about someday writing a guitar manual to be called Pumping Nylon. His finger-twisting drill book of the same name was published in 1995, followed by a series of progressive repertoire books and instructional videos. He’s now working on a five-volume guitar method for beginners to experts.

Given his strong views on the teacher-student bond, it’s not surprising that Tennant dedicated the original Pumping Nylon to Joe Fava. “I know my teachers made a big difference in my life,” he says, “and I know at some point – though they won’t admit it – I make a big difference in my students’ lives.”


Photo by Pamela Springsteen