Greg Jarvis (musician)

Greg Jarvis is a Toronto born musician and composer best known for his work leading the orchestral rock group the Flowers Of Hell.^[1][2][3][4] Jarvis’s compositions are largely informed by timbre-to-shape synesthesia, a neurological condition which causes him to see all sounds as layers of three dimensional shapes.^[5][6][7][8]

Biography

Early life

Jarvis was raised in Toronto, Ontario where he was a Royal Canadian Air Cadet band leader and served briefly in the Canadian Army reserve forces.^[9]

Career

Jarvis worked in marketing in the 1990s at the major label BMG in Toronto, Prague, Moscow, and Warsaw, and later for Universal International in London,^[10] handling acts including Nirvana,^[11][12] David Bowie, Patti Smith, Dolly Parton, Beck, Sonic Youth, Aerosmith, Malcolm McLaren, KISS, Deep Purple, and The Moody Blues, along with Death In Vegas, Spectrum and Spiritualized with whose members he would later collaborate as an artist.^[13][14] Jarvis also worked as an executive at the BBC’s Top Of The Pops.^[10][13][14]

He is currently a professor at Durham College’s Media, Art, & Design School where he teaches about music history and the music industry.^[10][14] Previously he worked as a lecturer in the United Kingdom at London Metropolitan University, and Buckinghamshire New University.^[13][14]

He writes music related articles for the Huffington Post.^[10]

Musical History

Prior to the Flowers of Hell, Jarvis played on Prague’s underground music scene in the 90s,^[11] in Moscow rockabilly group Merzky Beat,^[9] and in The Red Stripes in the early 2000s, a London based comedy-reggae White Stripes tribute act he formed with drummer Guri Hummelsund.^[15][16] “We stopped (The Red Stripes) when it started getting crazy big with Peel, the NME, BBC6, The Face, Duran Duran and some peripheral members of The Clash and The Sex Pistols getting into it. We signed to a Universal imprint, met The Wailers in a medieval fortress in Serbia, shot a video in Africa and felt we had to kill it before we became too known for it,” Jarvis said looking back in a 2015 Irish interview.^[17]

Jarvis produced and performed on an album of Northern Soul covers and originals by Emma Wilkinson, whom he managed after she won the 2001 Stars In Their Eyes TV talent series performing Dusty Springfield’s ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’.^[18]

He founded the Flowers of Hell in London, England in 2002 as a studio project, growing it into a live group in 2005 recruiting bandmates Abi Fry (later of British Sea Power and Bat For Lashes), Guri Hummelsund, Ruth Barlow, Steve Head, and Owen James.^[19] He returned to Canada in 2007 and formed another branch of the group, expanding its line up to encompass musicians living in both Toronto and London.^[8] He composes many of the pieces performed by the band,^[20][21] and is its main guitarist.

Highlights of the group’s career include collaborating with members of their major influence Spacemen 3, Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground praising their artistry and commencing his final radio show by playing three of the groups recordings in a row,^[22] being asked by Kevin Shields to open for My Bloody Valentine during the band’s 2008 reunion,^[23][24] and NASA’s mission control staff declaring their enjoyment of the group’s ‘space rock’ with the shuttle launch team syncing footage of a Discovery mission to the Flowers Of Hell’s ‘Sympathy For Vengeance’.^[25]

Synesthesia

Jarvis has auditory-visual synesthesia which causes him to see all sounds as abstract shapes surrounding him.^[26] In 2013 he founded the Canadian Synesthesia Association as a way of meeting other synethetes and raising awareness of synesthesia.^{[27][28][29][30]}

Education

Jarvis did summer studies under the octogenarian beat writer Bobbie Louise Hawkins at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado.^[31][32]

He also completed a master of arts in higher education teaching for which his thesis focused on how the mind processes music and holds an Arts & Media MBA.^[13][14]

Personal life

In 2010, Jarvis was chased by a group of protesters in West Papua New Guinea after photographing their activities. He played a ukulele to convince rebel soldiers from the Organisasi Papua Merdeka that he was a musician, not a government spy.^[33][34][35]

He crossed the Atlantic Ocean as a lone passenger on a working cargo freighter in 2013, intending to complete the mixing of the Flowers Of Hell’s ‘Symphony No.1’ at sea.^[17]

References

External links

• http://www.flowersofhell.com/
• http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/greg-jarvis/