Arrington de Dionyso

Arrington de Dionyso (b. January 4th, 1975) of Olympia, Washington uses performance as a vehicle for driving through the nameless territories held between surrealist automatism, shamanic seance, and the folk imagery of rock and roll.

After living in Chicago, Arkansas, and Spokane, Arrington moved to Olympia in 1992 to attend the Evergreen State College, where he studied Ethnomusicology, Music Therapy, and Butoh dance theater. In 1995 he founded the avant-rock group Old Time Relijun, which has since toured and recorded throughout the US, Europe, and Israel, and has released eight albums on the K Records label from Olympia, enthralling audiences with an approach to performance described as deep hermetic practice and/or "some fuckin' scary shit" by critics in the know.

As a solo artist, Arrington performs on the bass clarinet, jaw harps, and his voice with a distinctly multiphonic ability inspired by Tuvan throatsinging and the ecclesiastics of Albert Ayler and Don Van Vliet. Pushing the envelope between musicality and pure energy, between shamanic ecstacy and lunacy, he enwraps rooms with resonant sound. His devotion to bringing traditional Tuvan musics into an experimental music context has been acknowledged by Tran Quan Hai, the famous ethnomusicologist and the world's leading expert on throatsinging.

In addition to Old Time Relijun and his solo projects, Arrington devotes a significant amount of his time to furthering the cause of free improvisation. He is the founder and curator of the Olympia Festival of Experimental Musics, in its twelth year. Arrington tours constantly, and has performed or/and recorded with notable improvisers throughout the U.S.A., Canada, Italy, France, Israel and Lithuania. He presents workshops on improvising with the human voice in conjunction with his touring around the world.

Arrington has received increased attention for his visual artwork, which deals with many of the same themes of spirit, sensation, and improvisation as his music. Recent exhibits have been held in Los Angeles, New York City, Vancouver BC, Paris, Bologna, and Beijing, China. A series of several dozen ink drawings is on view at www.krecs.com/oldtimerelijun. His work is represented in Paris by Atelier Cardenas Bellanger. (www.ateliercardenasbellanger.com)