Indigenous Artist

Sandy Scofield Bio
It’s a long way from playing Cajun party music to acapella vocal arrangements of First
Nations songs to composing music and sound design for theatre, dance, including
Vancouver Opera’s Missing (about the murdered and missing Indigenous Women in
Canada) and for the Aboriginal Welcoming Song commission for the 2010 Winter
Olympics Opening Ceremonies. Sandy Scofield has invested a tremendous spirit,
navigating and negotiating through a life dedicated to music, sometimes on her own, and
sometimes with collaborators. She studied full-time at Vancouver Community College
taking their two-year jazz music program. She holds and undergrad degree in music
composition acquired at the esteemed Simon Fraser University School for Contemporary
Arts, studying under the likes of Canadian new music composer Owen Underhill and
electroacoustic music with pioneer Barry Truax.
Sandy Scofield is a multi-award winning composer, musician, musical director, singer.
songwriter and performer. She has studied classical, jazz, African, Indonesian gamelan
and electro-acoustic music. A Métis from the Saulteaux and Cree Nations, she hails from
four generations of fiddlers, singers and musicians. Among her five recordings to date,
she has won five Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, a Canadian Folk Music Award, an
Indian Summer Music Award (U.S.A.), a Western Canadian Music Award and received
three consecutive Juno nominations. Over the years, she has mentored innumerable First
Nations singers and songwriters in the way of rudimentary music theory, vocal
techniques, songwriting craft and music-industry protocol. She has toured to festivals on
five continents.
She has taken the tool box that she has enhanced as a touring musician, through her
composition work at SFU, and from the young musicians she mentors and applied them
to her sense of melody, harmony and rhythm, resulting in what writer Phil Paine
described as “a high-level synthesis of jazz, blues, rock and pop” with First Nations
traditions. “Her music is original, refined and intelligent.”
She is currently recording her fifth studio album, Red Earth, scheduled for release summer
2020.

INDIGENOUS ANCESTRY

Métis

SELF-IDENTIFICATION

métis Treaty 1