Arie Verheul van de Ven is a composer, teacher, and electro-acoustic violist hailing from Toronto.


Arie’s compositions have been performed throughout Canada, the US, and The Netherlands by ensembles including Orkest de Ereprijs, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Residentie Orkest, and the Cygnus Trio. From 2020 - 2022, Arie was the composer in residence at Jumblies Theatre in Toronto, where he worked with the Gather Round Singers, a community choir who were forced to make music online during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Collaborating with dozens of artists and community participants at Jumblies, Arie wrote music for a large-scale performance titled In This Moment which was composed to incorporate the issues of latency, feedback, and audio quality that are inherent on platforms like Zoom as fundamental aspects of the music.


Arie’s work has been heard at film festivals across the world, having written scores for director Carol Nguyen’s award-winning short films No Crying at the Dinner Table (2019), and Nanitic (2022). He is also a dedicated fan of Toronto’s local DIY film scene, and regularly collaborates with filmmakers and media artists in the city. Some of his favourite projects include the collaborative quarantine habius corpus Insomniac: The Movie (2020), the free-improvised live-scored short film festival VIDEOCRUNCH (2019 & 2021), and the competetive-cooking based sung-through film COOKSTOWN: The Musical (dir. Adam Bovoletis, 2018).


As a violist, Arie has performed in concerts for Continuum Contemporary Music, NUMUS Concerts, Korzo Theatre, and the Opera Forward Festival. His style of viola playing incorporates a wide pallet of unpitched scratches, creaks, and pops found somewhere between the bow and the string, while also integrating live processing and electronics. Arie’s 2022 piece Navigations turns the viola itself into a speaker by playing the instrument using a pair of transducers playing back generative soundscapes.

Arie is a dedicated educator and regularly teaches composition classes and private lessons for students of all ages.

Top Credits

Seance for a Close Friend (2024)
Nanitic (2022)
Gay Mean Girls (season 1) (2019)
No Crying at the Dinner Table (2019)
Cookstown: The Musical (2018)