Assorted quotes by members of the press relevant to various recordings and performances of music by Arthur Jarvinen

And Arthur Jarvinen's quietly contemplative "Viscous Linings" offered the possibility of a distinctive voice, unlike his surprisingly more mainstream colleagues.

                        - Charles Shere, Oakland Tribune, March 10, 1983

A good piece with an awful title was "The Seven Golden Vampires" for two pianos by Jarvinen. Here is an enchanting work, one that uses a substantial musical language in sections that suggest darkness, light, and darkness again. There is nearly a touch of blues in Jarvinen's dark harmony, and his brightness is the quick, bird-like brightness of Messiaen.
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when it is finished you feel you feel you have not just observed an intellect at work, but been connected to the moon, say, to a dark life ritual.

                        - Thomas Putnam, The Buffalo News/Entertainment, April 13, 1989

Arthur Jarvinen's Goldbeater's Skin (1988) is a mind-bender...
...It happens a little at a time during 21 repetitions of the phrase -
Like a Malcolm Arnold musical palindrome, the piece demands some concentration. But for those with a short attention span, the principal idea - a cartoonish, Straussian melody - is interesting in itself.

                        - Peter Dobrin, The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 1, 1993

It was the debut of California E.A.R. Unit percussionist Arthur Jarvinen's new ensemble, Some Over History (SOH), consisting of Jarvinen, Robin Lorentz, Marty Walker, and Toby Holmes playing, reciting, and singing as if Western civilization had suddenly found itself with nothing to say and passed SOH the microphone.
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Playing a riveting brand of junkyard classical music, SOH performed a suite-like sequence of fifteen musical-theatrical episodes nonstop for an hour and ten minutes, in the process hugely entertaining a small audience that positively beamed intelligence neurons into the cosmos.

                        - Lawrence Vittes, Los Angeles Reader, December 1, 1995

"Arthur Jarvinen is one of the subtlest composers of his generation, and one of the most unpredictable.
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"...one of the most brilliant figures in a generation that has really gotten its musical act together."

                        - Kyle Gann, liner notes to Edible Black Ink, Arthur Jarvinen/California E.A.R. Unit (oo discs), 1996

I find this music easy to listen to. I make this comment simply to allay fears in those who may be put off by an instrument list that includes, besides the normal piano, percussion, clarinet, guitar, electric bass, harmonica and cello, a fishing reel, small and medium window shutters, a variety of wooden boxes and a pencil sharpener.

                        - Albany Music Distributors, December 1996

Big highlight for me, however, was "The Paces of Yu", a piece largely comprised of window shutters and mousetraps going in unison for 19 minutes. Any song that inspires my cat to attack my Advents is okay in my book.

                        - epulse, January 3, 1997

Jarvinen's Totalist grab bag leaves us enticed and pleasantly confused.

                        - Josef Woodard, Los Angeles Times/Calendar, February 2, 1997

- the first of The Vulture's Garden's four parts launches the listener into a somewhat deceptive stretch of teeth-on-edge, Stravinsky-tinctured astringency; indeed, a distantly overseeing and wholly assimilated Stravinsky touches much of Jarvinen's art, which participates in the main in those extensions and refinements we assign as a convenience to second-generation American minimalism, which Jarvinen takes in hand and off in a delightful direction.
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Enough to say that Arthur Jarvinen writes economically, and in his own delightful way at the height of fashion, with a pen filled in equal measure with nectar and vinegar...a most satisfying release.

                        - Mike Silverton, Fanfare, March/April 1997

Jarvinen is a hip, versatile and sophisticated musician, and Some Over History is relevant in its concerns. It comfortably balances composed music with improvisation, acoustic with electronics, intricate composition with rock bass lines.
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It proved most impressive in "The Hole-Flow Symphony", a work-in-progress that explores the surprisingly rich possibilities of feedback, producing grainy sheets of sounds with the kind of colored, layered, irregular, rich textures of an early Rauschenberg combine - bits and pieces of just about anything made fascinating together.

                        - Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1997

"But what's most important on this deceptively spare, occasionally ironic, oddly contemplative album is the whole – the assimilation of jazz and classical musics and the balance between written and improvised material. Not fake at all."

                        - Josef Woodard, Los Angeles Times/Calendar, December 20, 1998

"Jarvinen, God bless him, is still an aesthetic loose cannon."

                        - Kyle Gann, Village Voice Consumer Guide, 1998

"Jarvinen is a genius. His performance and direction of this foursome which includes Robin Lorentz, violin, Marty Walker, bass clarinet, and Toby Holmes, trombone and bass, is concise and focused with a message hidden in its passages."

                        - Earwaves, Quick New Music Reviews, April 15, 1999

"Jarvinen is sufficiently immersed in history to be a true representative of his generation - and honest and original enough to set himself apart from it as well."

                        Kyle Gann, Chamber Music Magazine, June 2000

Arthur Jarvinen has discovered that effects boxes can not only alter sounds; if you loop them together in the right ways, they can also make their own. Listening to a recording of his duo with saxophonist Eric Barber, We Are Not Mailmen, I thought he was using some old analog synthesizer with maybe four oscillators to produce warbling drones, then speeding them up on tape for max density. No, just boxes and pedals. The chirpy streaming gave me an odd feeling of electronic connectedness that I don't get from TV, and the sound made me alert instead of narcotized.

                        - Greg Burk, L.A. Weekly/Calendar, April 29, 2002

"Booooo!"
                        - Alan Rich, in response to a performance by Arthur Jarvinen with Some Over History (Robin Lorentz, Marty Walker - Toby Holmes absent) at an American Composers Forum Los Angeles Chapter showcase, in collaboration with the American Music Center, Schoenberg Hall, U.S.C., April 6, 2002.

Premiered May 17 & 18, 2003, Los Angeles Theater Center, Tom Bradley Theater
Funded (in part) by a City Of Los Angeles (COLA) Individual Artist Fellowship.

                        no press - NONE...

"Greg Burk's listing for the event in the L.A. Weekly was articulate, concise, insightful - and much appreciated."

                        - Arthur Jarvinen, the composer, June 2003