Los Angeles-based Scott Healy is an award-winning composer, producer, jazz pianist and multi-keyboardist who multitasks across the musical spectrum. He is best known as keyboardist in the house band for Conan O’Brien: first on Late Night in NYC, then moving out to LA in 2009 for the short-lived The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, and now Conan on TBS, where he holds down the keyboard chair in the Basic Cable Band. Hudson City Suite by the Scott Healy Ensemble was released early in 2013 by Healy’s new record label, Hudson City Records, and is garnering worldwide praise and stellar online and print reviews. Healy’s multi-faceted career, including this new release, is the subject of an “Indie Life” feature article in the March, 2013 issue of Downbeat Magazine.
In addition to his composing, recording, and nightly TV gig, Healy works as a hired-gun on piano, organ, electronic keyboards and accordion; he has recorded and performed with many of the greats in rock, blues, R&B and jazz: Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Al Green, BB King, Jackson Browne, Levon Helm, Son Seals, Hubert Sumlin and Tony Bennett, among others. He has worked as an arranger for major label releases, including scoring the big band arrangement for the 2001 Ricky Martin hit “She Bangs”.
Healy’s work reflects his classical piano, composition, conducting and orchestration training, as well as his years in the studio and on the stage. Composing, arranging and scoring credits include the Portland Symphony, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Mel Lewis Orchestra, Christina Aguilera, and music for film and TV. He has received awards from BMI, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the “Distinguished Artist” award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Healy is a contributing editor to Keyboard Magazine, where he wrote a long-running column, “Session Sensei”, as well as numerous feature articles and lessons. His blog, Professorsco, explores various aspects of composing, listening, and arranging, and will form the basis of a new book, Advanced Jazz Composition and Arranging: Transparent Orchestration and Linear Harmony. He organized and leads the Ellington Study Group Los Angeles an informal master class devoted to classical and modern jazz composition.
Record producing credits include albums by his own groups—the Scott Healy Ensemble, NYC supergroup The Coalition, jazz trio and quintet music, as well as other artists including the eclectic NYC singer-songwriter Max Gabriel, whose 2007 release, Exile of St. Christopher, received nationwide acclaim and radio play. They are currently working on a new release, Yellow Spiders, due out in the summer of 2013.
A native of Cleveland, Ohio and an alumnus of Hawken School, Healy studied piano at The Cleveland Institute of Music, and attended Eastman School of Music from which he received a degree in Composition. While there he studied with Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, Rayburn Wright and Warren Benson. He taught at the New School in NYC, and was an Associate Professor of Jazz Studies at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY from 1990 through 2001.
