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Jeff Arnal
Jeff Arnal is an American percussionist, and the Executive Director of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC.
Since the 1990s, Arnal has been active as an artist, curator, and community organizer. In 2002, he performed a series of duo concerts with Charles Gayle at Tonic in NYC. In 2008, his trio with John Dierker and Gordon Beeferman performed at the Vision Festival in NYC. The following year, his percussion duo MEJA, with Michael Evans, appeared live on WFMU radio in East Orange, NJ, and at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY.
In 2002, he co-founded Improvised and Otherwise, a multidisciplinary festival in Brooklyn, NY. Throughout the 2000s, he curated On the Way Out, a monthly music series at Freddy’s Bar in Brooklyn. From 2012 to 2016, Arnal served as the Senior Music and Performance Specialist at the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage in Philadelphia, PA.
As a percussionist, Arnal has collaborated with a diverse range of musicians across the U.S. and Europe. His performances include notable appearances with Dietrich Eichmann at the Berlin Exploratorium and deSingel in Antwerp, as well as with Gordon Beeferman at Hallwalls in Buffalo, the MATA Festival in New York, Music Gallery in Toronto, and Roulette in New York. His work with choreographers has been presented at PS 122, Joyce SoHo, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, Chocolate Factory, and Judson Church. Arnal’s music can be heard on several independent labels, including Clean Feed, Creative Sources, Generate Records, Leo Records, and Public Eyesore.
In 2021 he was interviewed by Mike Watt on the Watt from Pedro radio show, and he was a guest on the All things Cage radio show with Laura Kuhn, Executive Director of the John Cage Trust.
His latest releases are Drum Major Instinct, a 2022 collaboration with Curt Cloninger on Mahakala Music, and Signal Otherwise, the debut album of his trio with Ken Vandermark and Bonnie Han Jones, which came out on Catalyst Sound in 2024. Drum Major Instinct was featured at the Big Ears Festival in 2024 and was profiled in the Slovenian It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine.
Arnal studied with composer Stuart Saunders Smith and visionary artist Milford Graves. He holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies: filmmaking and music composition from the University of Maryland and an MFA in Music from Bennington College, and he studied music at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, MD.
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Jeff Arnal / Curt Cloninger: Drum Major Instinct
by Glenn Astarita
Drum Major Instinct is an experimental music duo from Asheville, North Carolina. The duo consists of Jeff Arna, who plays drums & percussion, and Curt Cloninger, who works with modular synthesisers. Their debut release offers an entrancing blend of soundscapes which defy easy categorization. The album title emanates from a 1968 speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, referencing the 1952 homily ”Drum Major Instincts” by J. Wallace Hamilton which provides an underlying modus operandi for the album as a whole. ...
Continue ReadingLars Scherzberg: Top Floor Encounter
by John Chacona
The first phase of jazz was characterized by melodic improvisation. In its second phase improvisers dealt with harmony and, in the current phase, density is the improviser's concern. So says Anthony Braxton—if I understand him correctly (if anyone does). If so, then Top Floor Encounter may be as characteristic of our time as Armstrong's “Weatherbird" was to the first phase of jazz or Trane's “Giant Steps" was to the second. I didn't say “as important as" or “as good as"—only ...
Continue ReadingGenerate Records
by Marc Medwin
"It was the DIY movement that inspired me to create a platform for projects that I thought should see the light of day," says percussionist Jeff Arnal of his label, Generate Records. “Friends and I used to make cassettes, which we would distribute in small quantities, but the label format and moving to CDs has allowed more people to hear what we're doing. Having the finished product brings a sort of closure to each project." The small but vital outlet ...
Continue ReadingAaron Dugan + Jeff Arnal: Dog Day
by Eyal Hareuveni
Brooklyn-based guitarist Aaron Dugan, best known as the guitarist of the Hasidic Rap-Reggae Matisyahu, and drummer Jeff Arnal, a former student of Milford Graves and frequent collaborator with trumpeter Nate Wooley and bassist Reuben Radding, have been collaborating since 2003, building a telepathic affinity that enables them to move leisurely between ideas and motives that reference everything from 1960s free jazz, innovative Austrian composer Anton Webern, pop songs and blues to sound experiments à la Sonic Youth .The fourteen brief ...
Continue ReadingJeff Arnal & Gordon Beeferman: Rogue States
by Tom Greenland
Percussionist Jeff Arnal and pianist/composer Gordon Beeferman, two-thirds of Rara Avis (an ongoing trio with alto saxophonist Seth Misterka) and previously featured as a duo on 2001's Bodies of Water, meet again for Rogue States, a short suite of open-minded musical vignettes.
As on their earlier outing, Arnal and Beeferman eschew timbral trickery and sensational sound painting in favor of exploring and expanding on the more “traditional" acoustic palette of the drum kit and piano; unlike Bodies and Rara Avis' ...
Continue ReadingTransit: Transit
by Tom Greenland
While improvising musicians thrive on novel combinations of instruments and musical personalities, there is also the sense that close and repeated creative camaraderie fosters group cohesion. Transit, the eponymously titled debut recording from the quartet of drummer Jeff Arnal, bassist Reuben Radding, alto saxophonist Seth Misterka and trumpeter Nate Wooley--all active on the grassroots avant jazz scene burgeoning in boroughs of New York--boasts both qualities, producing a satisfying blend of freshness and familiarity. The album exhibits a ...
Continue ReadingTransit: Transit
by Troy Collins
A varied session with roots in cerebral European improvisation, AACM-inspired sound experimentation and New Thing-era ferocity, Transit's self-titled debut demonstrates expert communication, the key to any successful cooperative venture. Although organized by percussionist Jeff Arnal, the members of the quartet share writing credits, relying on collective improvisation as their principle strategy. Though Transit's music is rooted in free jazz, these players are not constrained by preconceived notions.
From the tumultuous vortex of sound that opens the album to ...
Continue ReadingGordon Beeferman/Jeff Arnal October 6 @ Roulette
Source:
All About Jazz
Friday - October 6, 2006
ROGUE STATES CD Release Concert
Gordon Beeferman (piano) Jeff Arnal (percussion)
Roulette 20 Greene St (between Canal and Grand St) New York, NY 8:30 PM $15 / Students $10 / Members free www.roulette.org www.generaterecords.net/gen11.htm
“The pianist Gordon Beeferman and the percussionist Jeff Arnal create tightly knit improvisations that range from the angular to the pastoral"--The New Yorker ...
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Charles Gayle and Jeff Arnal at Tonic
Source:
All About Jazz
Charles Gayle (tenor saxophone, piano) Jeff Arnal (percussion)
A mercurial and musical force of nature, saxophonist & pianist Charles Gayle plays a visionary music forged by spiritual exploration and sonic discovery. Gayle is one of the purest free jazz practitioners around whose improvisations are filled with soulful lyricism and speech like screams. Tonight he joins forces with meditative percussionist Jeff Arnal. A must-see!
Tonic 107 Norfolk Street New York, NY January 2, ...
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Charles Gayle and Jeff Arnal at Tonic
Source:
All About Jazz
Charles Gayle (tenor saxophone, piano) & Jeff Arnal (percussion) Presented by Tonic, Thursday, October 10, 2002
Tonic 107 Norfolk Street New York, NY Oct. 10, 2002 8:00 pm $10.00
http://www.tonic107.com
A mercurial and musical force of nature, saxophonist & pianist Charles Gayle plays a visionary music forged by spiritual exploration and sonic discovery. Gayle is one of the purest free jazz practitioners around whose improvisations are filled with ...
read more
"A balletic sense of time and imaginative deployment of colour have combined into a highly original concept" The Wire, UK
Drum Major Instinct Press Quotes
"A bright, evolving resonance worms through the excellent Drum Major Instinct... Cloninger churns out enticing texture after enticing texture and is always met by surprising runs from Arnal’s kit. Drum Major Instinct is playful in one moment, dark and furious in the next, but the connective tissue in between is where the most interesting magic lies." Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis
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Jeff Arnal
Location: Asheville
Instrument: Percussion
