Bio
Growing up in Northern California, Arnold’s first devotion was not to cello, but to guitar—his conduit to the underworld of rock, psychedelia, jazz, punk and noise. When, still adolescent, he casually picked up a friend’s cello, he had a vision of new possibilities—and devoted himself to it. He thrived on the new instrument, eventually moving to Seattle where he studied at Cornish College of the Arts, becoming a student of Walter Gray (the original cellist of the Kronos Quartet), and discovering his spiritual mentor in the legendary jazz violinist Michael White.
White’s approach to training the mind and body as a single entity and his belief in the mystic power of sound was a profound influence. An heir to this tradition, Arnold practices attunement to the psychic spaces that allow the player (and listener) to get inside a single note—to hear the harmonic substrata within.
In Seattle, he was part of the adventurous/experimental music scene that included Eyvind Kang, Jessika Kenney, Wally Shoup, Wayne Horvitz, Reggie Watts, Tim Young, Randall Dunn, and many others. At the same time, he was the go-to cellist and string arranger for the NW indie rock scene, playing on important records by Modest Mouse, Sleater-Kinney, Quasi, Mike Johnson, and many more.
After a move to NYC in 2005, he became more deeply involved in interdisciplinary projects that combined music with theater, film, dance, performance art, puppetry, and beyond. This led to his work with Dave Malloy, Gelsey Bell, and Brittain Ashford in Ghost Quartet and collaborations with the Shadow Parks Department.
In 2022 he began a collaboration with Grey Filastine, Walid Ben Selim, Ricard Soler, and Ali Abdi Omar on the opera Ali, which would premiere at La Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium in 2024.
Currently he is composing for BAQ, his quintet featuring Arun Ramamurthy (violin), Zosha Warpeha (Hardanger d’amore), Brent Arnold (cello), John Murchison (bass), Alaina Ferris (harp).