Looking at Scott Mackenzie’s 20-year career — which has culminated in his role as president and CEO of Toronto-based Morningstar Canada — you’d never guess that his first real passion was music.

And you might never imagine that Mac-kenzie, a data and information processing whiz, holds a bachelor of music degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., at which he majored in musical theory and composition.

But Mackenzie has been surrounded by music for as long as he can remember. His grandfather played a number of instruments in various recreational orchestras; Mackenzie’s uncle was a professional horn player in the army and later went on to play with the National Ballet of Canada orchestra; Mackenzie’s father dabbled in playing the bagpipes.

For the young Mackenzie, all it took was one glance at an album cover of Louis Armstrong playing his famous trumpet to get him hooked. “I remember seeing pictures of Louis Armstrong,” he says, “and I didn’t even know what his instrument was called. But I’d always say to my parents, ‘That looks really cool’.”

Mackenzie was seven years old when he asked his grandfather to teach him how to play the trumpet. Mackenzie stuck with the trumpet the rest of the way through elementary school and was not only head of his music class but also won the school’s music award.

In high school, Mackenzie played in a number of bands and signed up for every music class he could to obtain music credits. It was about this time that he decided he wanted to become a music teacher.

“I never saw myself as a performer or anything of the sort,” Mackenzie says. “But I always enjoyed that part of my high-school life and thought it would be a great environment in which to teach. I knew right away that I would go on to study music in university.”

At the time, only a handful of universities offered students the option of obtaining a music degree that was separate from a bachelor of arts. Mackenzie decided to attend Laurier.

Although many of Mackenzie’s fellow students turned to the performance side of music, he preferred to concentrate on theory and composition — the part most students despised. But, Mackenzie says, he liked the more academic approach that the theory side of music presented. Focusing on the design of tonal and non-tonal music, the program in which Mackenzie was registered allowed students to dive deeper into the world of music and encouraged them to engage in musical analysis, write research papers and criticize the historical and theoretical literature dealing with music.

Students in the music theory program at Laurier also study analytical and compositional procedures. Because of the connection between theory and performance — and the understanding of music gained in performance — theory majors also do practical study, which Mackenzie did solely on piano.

“You don’t get into music school unless you have some ability on the keyboard,” Mackenzie says. “And for someone who is focused on composition, I do it entirely on the keyboard.”

But along the way, Mackenzie slowly began losing interest in becoming a music teacher. He already knew that there wasn’t much money to be made as a fledgling composer, so he decided to add a minor in computer science to his degree — a combination that many found odd.

“I think I was only the second person ever at the school to have that combo,” he says. “So, I was definitely the oddball.”

As odd as Mackenzie’s course selection was, he decided to marry his twin interests of computer science and music in one of his final projects. Along with his composition professor, he co-created a computer-assisted composition program that would write music based on techniques that were studied in class.

During the summer months, Mackenzie continued to live and breathe music. He organized summer music series at the Uxbridge, Ont., recreation park at which he worked. The series consisted of jazz and pop ballad concerts, and it was there that Mackenzie met his future wife, Kellie Creet, who played the saxophone in the orchestra.

Years later, while working at Morningstar, Mackenzie would revisit those summer nights in Uxbridge.

“We went on to do bigger things, in terms of the concert series,” he says. “For a while, we were promoting concerts like crazy. So, over the years, I have always been loosely connected to the music world.”

@page_break@In university, Mackenzie found that he didn’t have much room to move around when it came to composing; there were certain guidelines that he had to follow. “You could never write a bunch of pop songs,” he says, “and say you are a composer.”

As a result, Mackenzie focused more on orchestral pieces for which he was able to write music on all levels, depending on which instruments were involved in each piece.

“These were big projects,” he says. “And I wish I had then the software that I have today, in which you can do all the notations. Back then, you had to write all the parts by hand.”

After graduating in 1985, Mac-kenzie became interested in popular ballads and spent some time composing for people who wanted to record demo tapes in hopes of landing a record deal. But Mackenzie quickly realized there was a lack of money in that line of work.

With his computer science minor and a newfound love for databases, Mackenzie made the transition into the business world and has never looked back — until he had children of his own.

Although Mackenzie admits he hasn’t picked up a trumpet in more than 20 years, he loves to play his keyboard and help his 10-year-old and 14-year-old daughters compose their own songs.

“It has become a wonderful family activity,” Mackenzie says, “in which my kids will write a small ditty and I will go and write the music to accompany it.”

Over the past five years, Mac-kenzie has also found himself buying equipment for the first time in many years and sees himself getting back into composing full-time once he retires.

“I had walked away from it for so long,” he says. “But now that I have two young children, I’m having a lot of fun teaching them about music.

“To me, if they happen to enjoy it, it will be something that they will have for the rest of their lives,” he adds. “Everything else is temporary.” IE