Arthur Ray Crivella is the founder and Executive Director of Jazzmania Live, and the drummer holding down its rhythm section. He started playing young and has kept the instrument at the center of his life ever since — drawn to jazz for the way it demands both structure and spontaneity, preparation and listening, in equal measure.
Arthur built Jazzmania to be the ensemble he always wanted to play in: a rotating collective where developing and experienced musicians share a stage on equal terms, and where the audience gets as much care as the musicians give one another. The ensemble is non-commercial by design. The Encore — Jazzmania's performance series and live-stream platform — was his answer to making Pittsburgh jazz accessible to anyone who can't make the room in person.
Outside the bandstand, Arthur has spent four decades building technology companies. In 2001 he was granted U.S. Patent 6,883,008 B2 for the “Knowledge Kiosk” — an architecture for organizing and querying specialized expertise that anticipated much of today's grounded-AI work. That patent remains the foundation of Crivella.ai, his current platform for litigation intelligence and technical advisory work. The through-line between his music and his technology work is the same: take the craft seriously, keep the people in front of it at the center, and build things that last.