Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

Composer Martin Arnold’s music takes audiences to a place that is both familiar, yet unexpected. His compositional style includes a celebration of “unreliable” elements within musical sound and includes strange allusions to mediaeval polyphony and post-bop jazz.

of-the-now: Martin Arnold, at Open Space from Sept. 22 to 24, brings together long time collaborators Quatuor Bozzini (Montréal) with Apartment House (UK) in a weekend of four concerts featuring Arnold’s music. “The Bozzinis have played more of my music in more parts of the world than anyone,” says Arnold.

Recording label Another Timbre has just released its “Canadian Composer Series” which includes, The Spit Veleta, a CD featuring Arnold’s music recorded by Philip Thomas and Mira Benjamin of Apartment House. Selections from this recording will be a highlight of the weekend concert series.

“I’m still first and foremost a listener. Listening is where the real action is, where consciousness and identity can change…,” said Arnold, in an interview published as part of Another Timbre’s CD release. “All the music I make is in some way melodic. I also think of all of it as being slack, meandering, psychedelic and, even at its most ponderously enervated, dance music. Moby once said of The Flamingos’ version of I Only Have Eyes For You that, along with being a beautiful performance of a beautiful song, it sounded like it was recorded underwater in a Methadone clinic. Even at its clearest, my music somehow aspires to this ideal.”

To celebrate the music of Martin Arnold, of-the-now and Open Space have each commissioned a new work to be premiered during the festival.