As a synthesis of roots, chamber vocal, and experimental rock, Arkora is a Toronto-based fusion collective led by composer-bandleader Benton Roark that has been active for a decade across North America as a performing and recording band, and as an incubator of boundary-pushing new music.

The group was founded in 2014 by Roark and conductor-vocalist Kathleen Allan with the launch of Roark’s concept-album Songs from the Rainshadow’s Edge on Redshift Records, following by a series of shows in Brooklyn, Vancouver, Austin, and St. John’s, Newfoundland.

As the driving creative vision behind the group, Roark’s music for Arkora has been called “an experience of deep and darkling beauty” (The Austin Chronicle), “simply beautiful” (newmusicbuff.com) “a deep unity of music and text” (Vital Weekly Netherlands), and “vigorously uplifting” (The Vancouver Observer).

The follow-up to Rainshadow’s Edge, 2017-18’s Transfigured Light project generated new music for vocal octet and chamber band by composers from Canada, the States, and China (and a new concept-cycle by Roark, Dystopia Lost), which was performed across Canada at festivals ranging from early music –Vancouver Bach Festival, to chamber – Ottawa Chamberfest, to experimental – Newfoundland’s Sound Symposium.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Arkora created Cloud Chamber, a four-part video EP born as a collaboration between five core members and two analogue film-makers (Redshift Records, 2022), as well as The Sign of Jonas, an apocalypse chamber folk oratorio set to the poetry of Luke Hathaway that was toured in the summer of 2023.

The 2023-24 season is shaping up to be the band’s fullest yet, with performances of Cloud Chamber at Toronto’s Array Space, a double LP record release of Transfigured Light at 918 Bathurst in Toronto, collaborative creation of a new opera – Eurydice Fragments – with Vancouver/New York’s re:Naissance Opera at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, and a number of chamber shows yet to be announced.

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