Chris Arrell (b. 1970, Portland OR) composes music for throats, fingers, and oscillators that celebrates the blurring of lines between human and machine, the natural and the digital, and the popular versus the avant-garde. His music, praised for its nuance and unconventional beauty (New Music Box, Boston Music Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution), has led to commissions from the Alte Schmiede (Austria), Boston Musica Viva, MATA, Spivey Hall, Cornell University, and the Fromm Foundation. A winner of the Ettelson Composer Award for his work Of Three Minds, he holds additional honors from Ossia Music, the League of Composers/ISCM, the Salvatore Martirano Competition, the MacDowell and ACA colonies, and the Fulbright Hays Foundation. His music is available from Beauport Classical, Electroshock Records, Navona Records, PARMA Recordings, and Trevco Music. Arrell is an associate professor at the College of The Holy Cross in Worcester MA.

Albums

Transition and Apotheosis

Release Date: April 19, 2024
Catalog Number: NV6612
21st Century
Avant-Garde
Solo Instrumental
Electronic
Piano
Saxophone
Society of Composers, Inc. presents 10 works from boundary-defying composers on TRANSITION AND APOTHEOSIS, the 35th installment of their celebrated Composers’ Series. SCI renews its decades-long mission to promote and disseminate contemporary music in this Navona Records release.

Pendulum

Release Date: August 1, 2014
Catalog Number: NV5963
21st Century
Chamber
Solo Instrumental
Flute
Piano
Violin
The 28th edition of the Society of Composers, Inc. release series and the 4th on Navona Records, PENDULUM extrapolates and elaborates on several themes relating to variation, transformation, repetition, and more.