Arthur Russell

Arthur Russell (1951–1992) was an American cellist, vocalist, and composer who spent his career in New York producing a body of work that crossed disco, minimalism, folk, and pop with an idiosyncratic emotional directness that resisted all categorization. Born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, he studied composition in San Francisco before settling in New York, where he became embedded in the downtown experimental music scene of the late 1970s and 1980s.

Russell worked in multiple musical worlds simultaneously: he collaborated with minimalist composers at the Kitchen, produced dance music for clubs including the Paradise Garage, and recorded intimate, folklike solo material with voice and cello.