Bio

Else Olsen S., composer, pianist and live artist, has specialized in works with Open Form, which means music or actions that is notated with graphic symbols, text instructions or by even more cryptic means. Improvisation is vital in her perfromances as well as her eclectic instruments beside the piano.

She is the conductor of The Toy Orchestra; kazoos, flutes, harmonica, bolt e-bow, mallets, music boxes, bird calls, The Bend Cow, chapel forks and singing bolts in addition to different toy pianos.
Her recordings, which stretch from noise to more classical sound collages, have gotten very good critics in e.g. The Wire.

For the work that she has done on John Cage she was invited by Lincoln Center and stayed there for one year to develop her musical projects further. She has broad collaborations with Scandinavian artists but has also worked and studied with American composers and performers like Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith and Christian Wolff. Else Olsen S. is also the artistic director of the Norwegian festival Open Form – a Paradigm of the Arts.