Scott August

by William Ruhlmann Native American flute player Scott August was born in Los Angeles, CA, and raised in Fullerton, CA. He was the son, grandson, and great-grandson of musicians. He took up the cello at age seven, later learning to play the kalimba and the piano. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Music degree. He began making his own recordings while in college, at first distributing them as cassettes and then pressing up an LP, and his music received airplay on such radio stations as KCRW and KXLU in Los Angeles and WNYC in New York. At the suggestion of Brian Eno, who found his music visual, August auditioned for ad agencies, and his work began to be heard in commercials as well as on television and in films. In 1996, August discovered Native American flute music, and he acquired his first flute in 1998. On his Cedar Mesa Music label, he released the albums Distant Spirits (2001), Sacred Dreams (2003; winner of a Native American Music Award), and New Fire (2005; winner of the Indian Summer Music Award), as well as a DVD, Ancient Light (2007), in which excerpts from his CDs (and one new track) accompanied 450 photographs he had taken in the American Southwest. He released his fourth album, Lost Canyons, on January 29, 2008.