Tony Arnold
Soprano Tony Arnold is a major American advocate for contemporary vocal music, participating in more than 100 world premieres. She is also a significant educator.
Arnold grew up in the Baltimore area. She was given to trying to play almost any instrument with which she came in contact, but she had no particular attraction to vocal music. She entered Oberlin College in Ohio as a piano student. As a student of Carol Webber, who encouraged her to explore unfamiliar vocal repertory, Arnold switched to singing, graduating in 1990. She took another detour into conducting, enrolling as a graduate student at Northwestern University in Illinois for studies in that field. She served as the music director for several orchestras in the Chicago area and held a joint vocal-conducting fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival.
Her definitive move toward vocal music came at Northwestern, where she was recruited by members of the contemporary chamber group Eighth Blackbird for a performance of Lukas Foss' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. From then on, Arnold focused on singing, although she did conduct the Boston Conservatory's new music ensemble during a residency there. She was a first-prize laureate of both the Gaudeamus International Competition in the Netherlands and the Louise D. McMahon Competition in the U.S. in 2001. In 2005, she made her recording debut on the Bridge label with an album featuring George Crumb's four books of madrigals as well as other works. Finding that the website domain tonyarnold.com had already been registered, she chose screecher.com instead; she has specialized in thorny modernist repertory.
Arnold is the soprano with the International Contemporary Ensemble, based in Chicago and New York. She moved to suburban Boston in 2012, and many of her performances have been concentrated in that area. In 2015, Arnold received the Brandeis Creative Arts Award, giving a year of performances and workshops at that school. She has performed with violinist Movses Pogossian, frequently in the Kafka Fragments of composer György Kurtág. Arnold has been featured at avant-garde music festivals internationally, including the Darmstadt Festival and Witten New Music Days in Germany, Time of Music in Finland, and the Perspectives XXI Festival in Armenia. She has appeared with leading U.S. contemporary chamber ensembles, including the JACK Quartet, Orion Quartet, Ensemble Modern, and the Talea Ensemble. She has also performed with major-orchestra-affiliated organizations such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music Now, Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Arnold made several more albums for Bridge and has also recorded for other labels oriented toward contemporary music, including Albany, Mode, and New Focus, where she was featured in 2023 on the album Eric Nathan: Some Favored Nook. By that time, her recording catalog comprised some 30 items. Arnold has taught at the Peabody Conservatory, the Boston Conservatory, the Tanglewood Music Center, and other major summer festival institutes. She has given master classes at more than 50 universities internationally.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Discography
18 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Complete Crumb Edition, Vol. 18
Tony Arnold, Quattro Mani, Marcantonio Barone, William Kerrigan, David Nelson
Klassiek - Released by Bridge Records on 11 jul. 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hanging Gardens
Klassiek - Released by New Focus Recordings on 20 jul. 2018
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Eckardt: Undersong
Fred Sherry, Claire Chase, Tony Arnold, International Contemporary Ensemble, Steven Schick
Kamermuziek - Released by Mode Records on 26 jul. 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
David Liptak: Brightening Air
Tony Arnold, Eastman Wind Ensemble, Mark Scatterday
Klassiek - Released by New Focus Recordings on 11 feb. 2022
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Complete Crumb Edition, Vol. 9
Klassiek - Released by Bridge Records on 15 mrt. 2005
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Anton Webern (vol.3) : Vocal & Chamber Works
Klassiek - Released by Naxos on 30 mrt. 2015
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza
Gábor Csalog, Tony Arnold, György Kurtág
Klassiek - Released by BMC Records on 19 feb. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Eric Nathan: Some Favored Nook
Tony Arnold, William Sharp, Seth Knopp
Klassiek - Released by New Focus Recordings on 15 sep. 2023
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Kurtág: Kafka Fragments, Op. 24
Kamermuziek - Released by Bridge Records on 10 mrt. 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Babbitt: Works
Klassiek - Released by Bridge Records on 1 jun. 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Songtree
Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, Tony Arnold, Duo Damiana, Zohn Collective, Timothy Weiss
Kamermuziek - Released by Oberlin Music on 16 nov. 2018
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Bright Codes
Jacob Greenberg, Tony Arnold, Ione, Nathan Davis
Klassiek - Released by Tundra on 19 nov. 2021
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
David Liptak: Dove Songs
Klassiek - Released by New Focus Recordings on 15 mrt. 2019
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Edward Smaldone: Once and Again
Klassiek - Released by New Focus Recordings on 14 aug. 2020
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Inflorescence – Music from Soundscape
Tony Arnold, Thomas Rosenkranz, Aiyun Huang
Vocale muziek (wereldlijk en religieus) - Released by New Focus Recordings on 5 nov. 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Abandoned Time
Daniel Lippel, Tony Arnold, International Contemporary Ensemble
Kamermuziek - Released by New Focus Recordings on 25 sep. 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Messiaen: Harawi
Klassiek - Released by New Focus Recordings on 4 jun. 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Music of Godfrey Winham
Vocale muziek (wereldlijk en religieus) - Released by Albany on 1 apr. 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo