David Arner

David Arner is long time proponent of innovative music and spontaneous composition. He is an active composer and performer on piano, assorted percussion, and most recently, harpsichord. He has had several performances at the Knitting Factory (NYC) in the 1990s, and many concerts at the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck (1998-2005). In September 2009 hour-long solo piano Birds of Central Park at The Stone (NYC) was highly praised as a major achievement by several prominent musicians on the downtown scene.

Arner has 4 CDs under his own name, and more on the way. His free jazz Porgy/Bess Act 1 (CIMP 2009), Arner’s most recent Trio release with Michael Bisio (bass) and Jay Rosen (drums), was called “among the best piano trio recordings I've heard in this waning year” (Gapplegate Music Review).

From 2003 to 2007, Arner was performing once a month in the weekly New Vanguard Series (which he also curated) at Deep Listening Space in Kingston NY. He has worked Joe McPhee, Joe Giardullo, Avram Fefer, David Taylor, Francois Grillot, Adam Lane, Dominic Duval, Tatsuya Nakatani, Dom Minasi, Jennifer Choi, Tomas Ulrich, Walter Thomas and the Sirius String Quartet.

In 1999, Arner became an avid birder. Inspired by the work of Messiaen, he began work on a series called Abstract Songs for Birds. In his American Goldfinch, with Pauline Oliveros (accordion) and Susie Ibarra (percussion), at the Deep Listening Convergence at the Lifebridge Sanctuary (High Falls NY) in 2007 he performed on harpsichord for the first time.

As an active member of the FM Artists Coalition (Woodstock NY) in the 1990’s, Arner performed at the Woodstock Guild’s Byrdcliffe Barn in a series of noteworthy performances with several musicians and poets. Most notably was Arner’s Prometheus Project, which lasted until 2004, exploring collective compositions though spontaneous consensus. In 2005, Arner began work on his current long-term project, Planetary Invocations for the Earthling. The Planetary Invocations is based on Arner’s Earthling for string quartet. A long term collaborator with both of these projects has been poet Charles Stein.

David Arner is also a pioneer in the revitalization of music for silent films. He has been presenting live, cutting-edge improvisational film scores for piano and percussion since 1986, over 100 performances to date. Over the years he has worked with percussionists Thurman Barker or Harvey Sorgen on several silent film projects. He toured throughout in rural New York towns through Catskill Nickelodeon. He has performed often at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck, at the New York State Writers Institute in Albany, at Music Mountain in Connecticut, at the Knitting Factory’s Silent Film/Loud Music Series in NYC, at Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica. In 1988 Arner played in an open field for “The Wind” in Otsego County NY. In 1991 he was a featured artist in “The Sound of Silents” presented by the American Museum of the Moving Image in NYC. In 2001 he presented a score for “Peter Pan” with a children’s improvisation ensemble at Upstate Films. Performances in 2009 include the National Gallery (DC), The Woodstock Guild (NY), and the Alice Guy Blache exhibition at the Whitney Museum.

Arner received a Jazz Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as several Meet the Composer Performance Fund grants over the years. He is a graduate of Oberlin College. He studied classical piano with Edna Golandsky, jazz piano with Dwike Mitchell, and balafon with Yaya Diallo.