A native of Ohio, Scott Kirby began his study of music at the age of six, and continued formal piano instruction for seventeen years. He worked under Robert Howat of Wittenberg University of Ohio, and Sylvia Zaremba at the Ohio State University. After obtaining an English degree from Ohio State University, Kirby moved to New Orleans and began his professional music career. In the following four years, he recorded the complete rags of Scott Joplin, and made his debut at all of the major ragtime festivals in the United States, as well as festivals in Belgium, France, Norway and Hungary.
Kirby has served as Musical Director of the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, MO, and of the Rocky Mountain Ragtime and American Music Festival in Boulder, CO, as well as director of the San Juan Islands Ragtime Institute. His appearances include a segment on CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood in 1998, and at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. Kirby co-founded a record company (Viridiana Productions, L.L.C.), has recorded 25 Cds, and has composed over 150 original works for piano and other instruments.
In 2005 Kirby withdrew from public performance to spend time with his family, compose, and paint (a new but significant artistic venture). While living in France during this time, he completed 75 paintings and 28 piano compositions, including “The Prairie Devotionals”. These paintings (belonging to a set entitled “Visions of the Great Plains”) and the new musical works set the groundwork for his new multi-media project “Main Street Souvenirs,” to debut in June of 2007. Kirby now lives back in North Idaho with his wife Marie-Dominique and two daughters Sara and Leah-Marie, and divides his time between composition and painting.

About the Art:
“Visions of the Great Plains” consists of drawings and watercolor paintings inspired by the American great Plains, by Scott Kirby. Referred to as an “accidental artist” by Sandpoint Magazine, Kirby began painting in 2005, after 9 months of drawing with dual-tip brush pens. Although the attempts to capture these mostly imagined visions are quite intentional, the origins of Kirby's transition from music to art was, in a way, “accidental,” and unexpected.
While drawing with his daughter Sara one afternoon, Kirby was suddenly compelled to continue into the night and following days, being bombarded by mental images which demanded expression. Weeks turned into months, and drawing turned into painting, all scenes rooted in a long relationship with the landscapes of the plains and prairies. Though some are inspired by actual locales, most are imagined scenes, or composites of familiar images, objects, skies, structures and enormous open spaces found in the High Plains and the Heartland. (For more information, visit: www.ScottKirby.net.)

"... Critics call [Scott Kirby] one of the best interpreters of ragtime music on the scene today."
-Charles Osgood, CBS News Sunday Morning, 1997

"Ace pianist"
-Time Magazine, Michael Walsh, August, 1992

“Scott Kirby’s recording CHARBONNEAU is beautiful
and shows another side of him,
from the wonderful title song and his other compositions, to his great interpretations of known and obscure gems by other composers"
- George Winston, 2005