Kendrick Scott
was born in Houston, Texas and grew up in a family of musicians. By age 8 he had taken up the drums and he later attended Houston’s renowned High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a school which has produced an impressive array of musical talent including Scott’s label mates Jason Moran and Robert Glasper, as well pop star Beyoncé and many others. While still attending HSPVA, Scott won several DownBeat Magazine student awards, as well as the Clifford Brown/Stan Getz Award from the International Association of Jazz Educators. He was later awarded a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music, where he majored in music education.

Scott has toured with Herbie Hancock, Charles Lloyd, The Crusaders, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Kurt Elling, and Terence Blanchard, also appearing on several of the trumpeter’s Blue Note albums including Flow (2005), A Tale Of God’s Will (2007), and Magnetic (2013). Scott’s first two releases on Blue Note as a leader presented his band Kendrick Scott Oracle: We Are The Drum (2015) and A Wall Becomes A Bridge (2019). Scott was also a member of the Blue Note All-Stars, a supergroup formed for the label’s 75th Anniversary featuring Ambrose Akinmusire, Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge, Lionel Loueke and Marcus Strickland who released the album Our Point Of View in 2017. Scott’s 2023 Blue Note album Corridors finds him paring down to a trio with saxophonist Walter Smith III and bassist Reuben Rogers.