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Arthur Jarvinen – Career Summary Kyle Gann of The Village Voice calls Arthur Jarvinen "one of the subtlest composers of his generation, and one of the most unpredictable".

Arthur Jarvinen (b. 1956) began establishing himself in the contemporary music community as a graduate student in percussion performance at CalArts in 1978. During the heyday of that institution's Contemporary Music Festivals Jarvinen was a prominent performer on major works by many of the leading composers of our era. He also began establishing himself as a composer in his own right, and joined the fledgling California E.A.R. Unit, with whom he continued for eighteen years.

Jarvinen's work is unusually diverse, to the extent that one could aptly descibe him as a "free-range artist". He has led and performed in all sorts of ensembles and bands – contemporary/experimental, jazz, rock, blues, live electronic, improvisation, Balkan traditional, surf – his composition catalogue includes nearly eighty chamber works as well as songs, rock instrumentals and film scores, and his creative work extends to experimental theatre, installations, visual and conceptual art, and "wordworks". Among his current interests is art made specifically for the internet. The Invisible Guy is a serialized "imaginary spy film" consisting of fifty episodes of music, text, and visuals. Tribal Songs of the Andromeda is an online audio book inspired by shortwave listening.

Jarvinen's music is well represented on various labels including OO Discs, MA Recordings, CRI, Los Angeles River Records, and his own Lakefire Records. He has received commissions, grants, awards and fellowships from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Koussevitsky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, Ohio University (1997 Achievement In Music Award), the City of Los Angeles, and others.

Jarvinen's works have been performed by the California E.A.R. Unit, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, New York New Music Ensemble, Icebreaker (England), Relâche, Bang On A Can All Stars, Essential Music, Xtet, Zeitgeist, Contemporary Chamber Players, Ensemble '88 (Netherlands), the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, New Performance Group, Twisted Tutu, Bosso Bongo, Magnetic Pig (Australia), New World Ensemble, Synchronia, Ensemble Green, Dinosaur Annex, Firebird Ensemble, Alea III, as well as numerous solo artists.

Major performances include the Ojai Festival, Tanglewood, CalArts Contemporary Music Festival, New Music America, Ars Musica (Brussels), the Meltdown Festival (London), de Ijsbreker (Amsterdam), the Kennedy Center, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Bang On A Can, Merkin Concert Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, and Essential Music (NYC), American Inroads (San Francisco), the Overtones Series and Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), North American New Music Festival, the Kenneth Patchen Festival (Ohio), the Louisiana Museum for Modern Art (Humlebaek, Denmark), and Music Fest Kiev.

Jarvinen received the Bachelor of Music in applied percussion from Ohio University (1978) and the Master Of Fine Arts from the California Institute Of the Arts (1981), where he studied percussion with John Bergamo, Karen Ervin, and Ruth Underwood, and composition with Stephen Mosko, Morton Subotnick, and Earle Brown.

Arthur Jarvinen is currently on the composition faculty of the California Institute of the Arts.

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