000 Introducing Fotos, Fiddles, & Felines - and Brenda Scott

Fotos, Fiddle, & Felines is a new, weekly podcast created by Brenda Scott for photography, music, and cat lovers. Each month Scott interviews photographers, musicians, cat experts, and related specialists and provides updates on her current exhibit work.

Dr. Brenda Scott is an art photographer, cellist, writer, and independent scholar based in Durham, North Carolina. She has been playing with cameras for more than 30 years and digital photography for over a decade. Originally trained as a musician and organologist, she worked as a curator of a musical instrument museum for just over 10 years before leaving academia to pursue a freelance career.

Her "Stagville: Black & White" exhibit of 64 images was displayed for nearly two years, opening at the North Carolina Museum of History, a Smithsonian affiliate, and then moving to The Museum of the Cape Fear in Fayetteville. It is now part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC Chapel Hill.

Her current photographic exhibit work focuses on connections between the Scottish Highlands and North Carolina, using as its starting point the life of Flora MacDonald. Her current writing projects center on the cello; she is completing a history of the British cello and a novel about a small cello, called The Scottish Wildcat. Musically, she continues to experiment with the small, lion-headed instrument she commissioned from John Pringle in 2014.

Although primarily focused on creating her own art, she enjoys teaching and has over 25 years of experience. Her cello teachers included William Pleeth, Fred Raimi, and Rochelle Kidd. Scott earned a doctorate from the University of Oxford (Somerville College) for her research on the history of the British cello; a master’s degree in cello performance from Auburn University; a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies – music history, art history, and archaeology – from UNC Chapel Hill; and a second bachelor’s degree in fine art photography from the Academy of Art University.