Bio
Brent Arnold’s extensive creative career in the worlds of new music, improvisation, opera, theater, dance, electronic music, pop, and rock is hard to summarize. The New York Times has hailed his “mastery across string instruments” and his work can be found on hundreds of recordings in a wide range of genres.
Growing up in Northern California, Brent Arnold’s first devotion was to guitar—his conduit to the underworld of rock, psychedelia, jazz, punk and noise. When, still a teen, he casually picked up a friend’s cello, he had a vision of new possibilities. He thrived on the new instrument, eventually moving to Seattle to study at Cornish College of the Arts as a student of Walter Gray (original cellist of the Kronos Quartet), and then discovering his spiritual mentor in legendary jazz violinist Michael White (Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Roland Kirk, John Handy).
White’s practice involved training the mind and body as a single entity, and his belief in the mystic power of sound was a profound influence. Hours could be spent on a single note, learning to hear the harmonic substrata within it.
In Seattle, he was a central figure in the avant-garde music scene that included Eyvind Kang, Jessika Kenney, Wally Shoup, Wayne Horvitz, Reggie Watts, Tim Young, Randall Dunn, Andrew Drury, Lori Goldston, among many others. At the same time, he became a go-to cellist and string arranger for indie/alt rock bands, working on records for Modest Mouse, Sleater-Kinney, Mark Lannegan, Quasi, Brand New, and Mike Johnson.
After a move to New York City, his compositional flexibility and adventurous cello playing found him working with artists such as Jim Jarmusch, Zola Jesus, Steve Von Till, Drew McDowall, Arun Ramamurthy, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Jessica Pavone, Lia Ouyang Rusli, DJ /rupture, Hiro Kone, Ben Copperhead, and many more.
He also became more deeply involved in interdisciplinary projects that combined music with theater, film, dance, performance art, puppetry, and more. This led to his work with Dave Malloy, Gelsey Bell, and Brittain Ashford in Ghost Quartet, collaborations with the Shadow Parks Department, and composing for choreographer Ashwini Ramaswamy and film director Marc Wilkins, among many others.
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 The Night Heron Quintet, featuring Arun Ramamurthy (violin), Zosha Warpeha (Hardanger d’amore), Brent Arnold (cello), John Murchison (bass), Alaina Ferris (harp).