About Scott
Scott Gac was born on March 14, 1973. He grew up between strip malls and quickly disappearing farmland east of New York City, on the northern part of Long Island.
For years Scott spent most of his time playing the double bass and dreaming that he would some day become a medical doctor. After graduating from Columbia University in 1995 and completing graduate studies in music performance at The Juilliard School in New York City, Scott soon realized that school is more fun than carting a bass around the country for little pay, that temping for investment bankers is lucrative but demeaning, and that he gets queasy around needles. A seven-year stint at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York earned Scott a Ph.D. in history in 2003.
After teaching at Baruch College and Queens College of the City University of New York, Scott spent two years teaching and researching as a Special Collections Humanities Fellow at Yale University, where he also finished his book on the Hutchinson Family Singers.
Scott’s first book Singing For Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth Century Culture of Antebellum Reform is very much the product of his time at CUNY, Juilliard, and Yale. Combining his interest in music and history, Scott’s book on the Hutchinson family reflects his frustration with the reality that too few books successfully capture the importance and vitality of music in society and that too few academics—the people who are most knowledgeable about historical topics—publish readable books.
When not writing, Scott enjoys the sport of triathlon and is a three-time age-group member of the long-course Team USA for USA Triathlon. He writes and trains in and around Glastonbury, Connecticut, closer to farms than to strip malls, and is ever hopeful that nature will prevail. His wife and two cats tend to his sanity.
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