Biographical note

Arne Deforce has always been attracted to new musical models, linked to a sense of wonder for changing the inner state of mind and revolutionizing our musical consciousness. 

He is known for his passionate and unparalleled performances of contemporary and experimental music. His inventive programs explore new forms of musical expression where the discovery of the cello's "otherness" and uninhibited creative listening are paramount. His approach and playing background is inspired by modern art, philosophy, nature and astrophysics. More recently, Arne Deforce has been fascinated by exploring a new aesthetic of performance practice with concert programs that seek to make us more aware and critically sensitive to the great ecological mutation and digital revolutions. How these challenge and redefine our identity and our relationship to non-human life forms, nature and the digital. In other words, art and music as the practice of a new experiential aesthetic in the sense of developing and increasing our sensitivity to changing perspectives.

As a musician and researcher, he is passionate by how new concepts and relationships in music can be developed at the intersection of music, art, science and technology between the instrument, the musical gesture and the use of electronics. In particular, by the possibilities of sound processing and the expansion of sound possibilities through the highly developed use of advanced surround live electronics. Inspired by this, his explorative playing technique took the endless variations of a cello's strings and the use of the bow as a kind of hard ware sound processor, to another level of praxis.

His collaboration on Richard Barrett's ‘life-form’ (2012), a full-length cycle inspired by biodiversity and electronic life forms, or Raphaël Cendo's short and powerful apocalyptic piece Foris (2012), for example, demonstrates that with the physicality of playing and the pervasive use of electronics, a whole new spectrum and range of musical possibilities can be developed.

In 2017, Arne Deforce joined forces with composer Hèctor Parra and sound designer Thomas Goepfer to push the boundaries of their ability and knowledge. The starting point was a shared interest in astrophysics, specifically gravitational waves and black holes and the question of how to create a new kind of cosmology in music, following Stockhausen's idea as creating "a flow of superconscious cosmic electricity transformed into sound." The final score resulted in an extraordinarily compelling sonorous cosmic firework based on an imaginary psycho-acoustic journey through a black hole; a full-length journey of cosmic music through the infinite multidimensional time-spaces of sound.

Currently, Arne Deforce is continuing his search for new forms of musical expression, with a series of new composition commissions inspired by the exploration of an aesthetic of non-anthropocentric musical models. The idea of creating new musical metaphors and a new aesthetic that expresses the interconnectedness of human and non-human life forms, including the electronic.

His general repertoire is focused on solo and chamber music, with a special interest in works by composers such as Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His engaged, energetic and imaginative approach to music has inspired many composers including Richard Barrett, Luc Brewaeys, Raphaël Cendo, Hèctor Parra, Kee-Yong Chong, Alvin Curran and Phill Niblock, to collaborate and to write original works especially for him. In 2004, after one such collaboration, Jonathan Harvey described Arne Deforce as “one of the most exciting new cellists I have come across. Everything he plays is approached with a powerful intensity born from an engagement with the music on a deep spiritual and psychic level. He is highly imaginative and brings an originality and, above all, creativity to his interpretations which is both fiery and structured.”

His musical partners and fellow musicians include Daan Vandewalle, Benjamin Dieltjens, Mika Vaino, Richard Barrett, Peter Jacquemyn, Yutaka Oya, Yannick Willow, Thomas Goepfer, in addition to Champ d'Action, Ictus, Musik Fabrik, the Concertgebouw Brugge, Centre Henri Pousseur Liege, Ircam Paris and Grame Lyon. Arne Deforce plays at leading international festivals and venues for new music including Concertgebouw Brugge, Ars Musica, Autumn Warsaw, Biennale de Venice, Holland Festival, ManiFesta-Agora Paris, Archipel Geneva, Musica Strasbourg, Biennale de Lyon, Mito, Tempo Reale Firenze, Artescienza Rome, Fondation Royaumont, Musica Sacra Maastricht, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Amsterdam Cello Biennale.

His remarkable discography on the cello music of Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman, Iannis Xenakis, Richard Barrett, Pascal Dusapin (Aeon-Outhere); Jonathan Harvey (Megadisc); Phill Niblock (Touch); Mika Vaino (Mego) – has received international acclaim (five stars Diapasons d’Or, Coup de coeur de l’Académie Charles Cros, Prix Caecilia).

In 2012 Arne Deforce received his PhD in the arts from the University of Leiden (in partnership with the Orpheus Institute Ghent) on the performance practice of late twentieth-century new complexity music, with a thesis entitled ‘LABORINTH Π – Thinking as experiment, a series of 472 Meditations on the need for creative thought and experimentation in performing complex forms of music from 1962 to the present’.