Projects
Recording Artist: Calvin Arsenia
Calvin Arsenia began his obsession with the recording arts as a teenager when he would layer harmonies by singing into the built in microphone on his older brother's PC. This new-found passion began as the MP3 and file-sharing broke the music industry and Arsenia believed that the value of music was not primarily in the recording itself, but in the live ceremonial experience of music. Since 2016, Arsenia has produced many recordings. Truth be told, he's lost count; however, of the recording project that have been released to the public and promoted, radio DJ, fan, historian, and friend-of-Calvin-Arsenia Mark Manning put together a thoughtful and exhaustive discography of Arsenia's recordings.
DISCOGRAPHY by MARK MANNING
LISTEN: Recorded Works of Calvin Arsenia
Musical Director: West 18th Street Fashion Show
2019 marks the beginning of a long term relationship between Arsenia as Kansas City's annual independent avant-garde renegade fashion show - The West 18th Street Fashion Show (W18). Centered at the historical cultural fulcrum of Kansas City, Missouri, regional and international fashion and textile artists submit their work to a private jury and are selected based on concept, theme, and evidence of immaculate execution. Arsenia made it his pleasure and focus to tailor every sound and song in collaboration with the work of the fashion designers in order to create a sonic frame work to display the daring designs that W18 has grown a reputation for.
WEST 18th STREET FASION SHOW
Greenwood Social Hall
Long term collaborator, ally, and friend of Calvin Arsenia, Peregrine Honig began hosting performing arts events in the Spring of 2017 at Greenwood Social Hall - the gently renovated historically Black Baptist Church formerly known as Greenwood Baptist Church. Over the years, Calvin Arsenia had filmed multiple projects in the space: Toxic music video, Convert Kit music video, and Live at Greenwood. As her season came to close near the end of 2023, Honig asked Arsenia if he would like to take the helm and make the place his own. He said yes and the rest, as they say, is history.
GREENWOOD SOCIAL HALL
Author: Every Good Boy Does Fine
Near the end of 2020, in the fever of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the shut down of all public gatherings including but not limited to concert experiences, Calvin Arsenia took the time to compile a part of his life's story into a 184-page confessional containing poetry, prose, and pen-and-ink drawings outlining his childhood, conversion to Christianity, his acceptance of his sexuality, and his deconstruction. You can find out more about Every Good Boy Does Fine here:
Concept & Experience Design: Savor The Sound
Large scale corporate and non-profit fundraising gala dinners are notoriously terrible. Souless music. Cold and bland food. Blantant emotional priming. Wayyy too reliant on cheap booze to do the work.
Theo Bunch came to Calvin Arsenia and his long-time visual art and graphic design collaborator Chris Dong to devise a plan to host a fundraiser to outshine every other fundraiser before or since. Shining a light on synesthete tendancies of Arsenia's experience of food and music, Savor the Sound harnesses the passion of Chef Celina Tio and Calvin Arsenia by creating music and food that are mutually inpsired and presented in tandem.
SAVOR THE SOUND - a fundraiser for BUILD TRYBE
Motion Picture Music: SUMMER IN HINDSIGHT
In response to the unfathomable global shut down, the annual West 18th Street Fashion Show decided to make a film in lieu of their ordinary hot-summer-night fashion show/block party. The film, starring, scored, and edited by Calvin Arsenia, went on to win many international awards in part because of a lack of competition in the era of social distancing, but also due to its delicate, sincere, and deliberate transparency surrounding the fear and trepidation that mars the year 2020 and the years that follow.
SUMMER IN HINDSIGHT
Motion Picture Music: Mira (2023) - Short Film by Eva Louise Hall
'Mira' is an 11-minute stop-motion animated surrealist horror film that tells the story of a struggling accordionist busker who gets more than she bargained for when her desire for success attracts the attention of a mysterious and enticing competitor.
Calvin Arsenia was the Musical Director and Sound Designer for this award-winning film.
MIRA BY EVA LOUISE HALL
Motion Picture Music: Convert Kit
Calvin Arsenia was a featured artist and actor for digital ad campaign for a start up company called ConvertKit. The video was directed by The Wade Brothers. The company's mission was to help artists and creative entrepreneurs develop and implement business strategies. You can see the beautiful ad was also filmed at Greenwood Social Hall.
MAKE YOUR MUSIC KNOWN WITH CONVERTKIT - FEATURING CALVIN ARSENIA