John Schott

After earning a composition degree from Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts in 1988, guitarist John Schott concluded studies with Gary Peacock and Jerry Granelli. The same year he served as musical director for a Shakespearean stage production and partnered with a choreographer on a dance work. Schott relocated to Berkeley, California, the following year and helped establish the ensemble Planet Good, whose self-released album Prozac Holiday helped the group gain popularity throughout the Bay Area. He continues to reside in the region and maintains frequent partnerships with fellow local musicians of distinction, among them clarinetist Ben Goldberg.

A 1994 NEA grant supported a concert series featuring Schott and Goldberg, later joined by saxophonist John Zorn, that presented the compositions of pianist Herbie Nichols. The pair subsequently assembled the quartet Junk Genius alongside bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Kenny Wollesen; the group issued a self-titled album on Knitting Factory in 1994 and followed it with Ghost of Electricity on Songlines in 1999. Schott also participates in the occasional collective T.J. Kirk with guitarist Charlie Hunter, whose second recording earned a 1997 Grammy nomination.

Numerous Tzadik releases feature Schott’s guitar work, including his own leader date In These Great Times, which sets texts by Kafka, Karl Kraus, and Jacob Glatshteyn to music sung in Hebrew, German, and Yiddish respectively, as well as the 1998 trio album What Comes Before recorded with Goldberg and drummer Michael Sarin. Toward the end of the decade Schott directed his eleven-piece Ensemble Diglossia, whose personnel included Rova’s Steve Adams and percussionist William Winant.