Peter Jarvis

Peter Jarvis (born 1959) is an American percussionist, drummer, conductor, composer, music copyist, print music editor and college professor.

Peter Jarvis (born in Hackensack, New Jersey) is a percussionist, drummer, conductor, composer, music copyist, print music editor and college professor.

He is an associate director of the Composer Concordance and co-director of Composers Concordance Records.

He teaches music at Bergen Community College.

Jarvis composed, orchestrated, arranged and performed music for Moonrise Kingdom, a film by Wes Anderson, which opened the Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2012.

Moonrise Kingdom received a Golden Globe nomination for "Best Score" and an Academy Award nomination in 2013.

His involvement in the film as a composer included various individual projects ranging from adding music to a score by Benjamin Britten and composing original music for several scenes.

As arranger and orchestrator he worked on music composed by Mark Mothersbaugh and as performer he led a percussion section and provided several improvisations.

He has also performed his own solo percussion music for the second, third, fourth and fifth seasons of the HBO Series "Boardwalk Empire."

During the third season, his music appeared in seven episodes.

Jarvis worked on Ang Lee’s movie Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, released in 2016; his involvement on the project included transcribing, arranging and as percussionist.

More recently he recorded for the sound track of "The Pale Blue Eye" a film directed by Scott Cooper, starring Christian Bale.

Over the decades, as a freelance musician, he has performed popular and unpopular music with equal enthusiasm.

He has performed as a soloist, chamber player, Broadway musician and as conductor with chamber music ensembles including the Velez / Jarvis Duo, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, CompCord Ensemble, The Group for Contemporary Music, Saint Luke's Chamber Ensemble, the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble (which he directs) and on new music/arts festivals such as the Europe/Asia Festival and the Hong Kong Arts Festival and in orchestras and with choruses.

He has performed for PBS, Russian and Hong Kong television.

The New York Times has said about Jarvis's conducting: "... [He] did full justice to its rhythmic complexities; Mr. Jarvis and his forces richly deserved the standing ovation they received."

Jarvis has performed and or recorded with composers musicians such as Milton Babbitt, John Cage and Steve Reich.

He is active as a percussionist, conductor and composer in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and elsewhere.

As conductor he has appeared with the Saint Luke's Chamber Ensemble, the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, Composers Concordance, Ensemble21 and several other groups.

He has appeared as guest conductor on the San Francisco Symphony's New and Unusual Music Series with the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble.

The proliferation of percussion literature is extremely important to Jarvis and he has performed nearly 100 solo pieces for multi-percussion, timpani, vibraphone, marimba, solo snare drum and drum set composed for him.

His compositions are published by Calabrese Brothers Music LLC, Indian Paintbrush Productions, Peter Jarvis Music Publishing, and L-T Music Publishing.

He is a voting member of The Recording Academy which selects The Grammy_Awards winners, and is a member of Broadcast Music, Inc.

The New York Times wrote Jarvis "led the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble in a precise, tactile performance with an elastic pulse", and that the "Percussion Symphony" was "a mammoth work ... on its way to becoming a genuine 20th-century warhorse" which Jarvis conducted from memory.

The Record described Jarvis's conducting of "Percussion Symphony" as "a masterful example of the conductors craft", and praised the way he sculpted the melody in the medieval song by Guillaume Dufay.

The New Music Connoisseur mentioned that "While the new music scene abounds with percussionists, only a very few can match the awesome musicianship of Peter Jarvis" and further described his performance of Ron Mazurek's Masked Dances as "the highlight of the evening".

According to Raul da Gamma of Jazz da Gamma, "This is a duet recording by two musicians (Peter Jarvis and Gene Pritsker) of impeccable pedigree."

(August 1, 2016).

In Percussive Notes, the official journal of the Percussive Arts Society, Quintin Mallette wrote "... by the seminal performer, composer, and conductor Peter Jarvis".

He went on to say "I recommend this recording not only for its artistic merits, but also for its pedagogical merit as a tool for exploring the less tangible aspects of musicianship necessary in chamber music settings."

Published by Calabrese Brothers Music, LLC.

Selected

Partial

Partial