Stephen Arnold is a bassist and composer, based in Washington, DC. Originally hailing from Greenfield, Massachusetts, Arnold studied the upright bass with Herman Burney, Jr. at the George Washington University, where he majored in Music and English and was a member of the 2018 class of the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program at the Kennedy Center. He plays both upright and electric bass with several of the region's top artists, including Fran Vielma, Sharón Clark, Todd Marcus, Sarah Marie Hughes, José André Montano, Elijah Jamal Balbed, Brandon Woody, Brian Settles, Nataly Merezhuk, and Dana Hawkins. He is a member of acclaimed punk-jazz band ¡FIASCO! as well as the Fran Vielma Pan-American Jazz Orchestra and Quartet and has had the honor of performing at venues such as The DC Jazz Festival, The Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival, Jazz a la Calle, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, The Kennedy Center, Blues Alley, Constellation, and Keystone Korner Baltimore.

Arnold's 2020 debut album Sea Change with his band of the same name was a finalist for jazz album of the year at the WAMMIE Awards and voted the #4 DC Jazz album of the year by Capitalbop. Sea Change's second album Until Now was voted Capitalbop's #2 DC Jazz Album of 2023. The album features a nine song suite of original compositions by Stephen Arnold and performances by some of DC's best: Sarah Marie Hughes on saxophones, Federico Gonzalez Peña on piano, Nelson Dougherty on guitar, Keith Butler, Jr. on drums, and Arnold on bass. The band has performed at many great venues, including the DC Jazz Festival, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Bop Stop at the Music Settlement, An Die Musik, the Gaithersburg Arts Barn, the Kreeger Museum, and the legendary Twins Jazz.