John Oliver, composer, guitarist, electronics. Has performed with François Houle, Paul Dolden, Sergio Barroso, Standing Waves Ensemble, Ensemble Symposium, Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble and others. His music has been performed by The Borromeo String Quartet, Vancouver Symphony, Canadian Opera Co., CBC Radio Orchestra, New Music Concerts, Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne, National Arts Centre Orchestra, St. Lawrence String Quartet, SMCQ, Vancouver New Music, etc.
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Influences
As a young classical guitarist I was influenced by Julian Bream and John Williams. For my compositions, it's more extensive, and includes John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Sergio Barroso, Berg, Berio, Cage (prepared piano period), Paul Dolden, Grisey, Charles Ives, Nikolai Korndorf, Leo Kupper, alcides lanza, Mauricio Kagel, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Bruce Mather, Messaien, Nancarrow, Harry Partch, John Rea, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Luigi Russolo, Frederick Rzewski, Satie, Scelsi, Stockhausen (Gesang & after Stimmung), James Tenney, Gilles Tremblay, Barry Truax, Varese, Claude Vivier, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Xenakis, Walter Zimmermann; also the meditations of Stuart Dempster, Paul Horn, Terje Rypdal, David Hykes, David Byrne, David Bowie, & Brain Eno; Jimi Hendrix, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk; Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Glen Velez, Trichy Sankaran, Ravi Shankar; composers associated with classical guitar, like Villa-Lobos, Leo Brouwer, Albeniz, Granados and Luis Milan; and a host of earlier breeds, like J.S. Bach, Scarlatti, Debussy, Bartok, Mahler, Delius and Scriabine; Obrecht and Ockeghem; the polyglot madgridalists; and of course, the Troubadours. Also: Kandinsky, Bruegel, Turner, Jim Dine, Anselm Kiefer, Pablo Neruda, José Emilio Pacheco, Gaston Bachelard, Julian Jaynes, Nietzsche, John Berger, Marshall McLuhan, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Duo Fresco inspired New Year's Eve performance of my "A Dream of Africa": great performance, great balanced live recording. Turn it up and enjoy! (You can hear the original version on Oliver Yu duo page)
Here are two videos of Alan Rinehart playing my early classical guitar music
Continuum 2 performed by Alan Rinehart
Harmonium 3 performed by Alan Rinehart
PRESS
About the live show
"rapidly ping-pong-ed single notes inside a vibrating framework that was like a suspended Flamenco guitar strum." -thelivemusicreport.ca
About the CD Icicle Blue Avalanche
"one of the most viscerally dramatic discs I've heard in quite a while ... huge slabs of extremely solid music."
-George Zahora, Splendidezine.com
"...sounds like a cappuccino machine whose milk-steamer has become psychotic...a rising curve of time...the tapping on a keg with dozens of chopsticks, steam escaping from a madman's ears. The ascending curve becomes a titanic mush of noise."
Reviewed by Michael Gogins, Computer Music Journal 24.3, Fall 2000
About the instrumental music
"Both intellectually stimulating and a great deal of fun, Eagle Flies to Mountain deserves to become an intercultural standard."
-The Georgia Straight
"a delicate yet often complex sense of beauty"
-Musicworks
"Playful and stirring"
– Mack Hagood, The Far East Audio Review.
"…an episode of Wild Kingdom interpreted by a klezmer band. Lots of fun."
-Vancouver Sun
www.johnolivermusic.com
to hear excerpts from my compositions
to see example scores.
to browse, download and purchase sheet music, as PDF file or printed and bound. Some guitar and piano music available at Sibelius Music
BUY MY SOLO CD
at CD Baby (as CD or high quality MP3s), where I get the best cut of the sale:
I write opera, orchestral, chamber music and electroacoustic music. My preferred creative axis is the meeting point of live music and technology. My electroacoustic music is often quite dense, and explores sounds unique to this medium. I am inspired by resonance, as well as natural forms and processes. My strongest influences come from spectralism, post-minimalism, microtonal music and the immersive electronic music that began with Stockhausen.
Recent successes include: • Vancouver 2010 Olympics commission for the Turning Point Ensemble • Commission to write for ARS NOVA ensemble (Sweden) • the World Premiere of the opera Alternate Visions in Montreal, • nomination of my piece DUST for "Outstanding Classical Composition" at the 2006 Western Canadian Music Awards, • premiere of the FACES cycle of orchestral compositions commissioned by the Windsor and New Westminster symphony orchestras.
My music has been performed by the Vancouver Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Canadian Opera Company, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne and others.
Since co-founding the Group of the Electronic Music Studio (GEMS) in 1983 (Montreal), Oliver has written, performed and conducted music with live electronics, tape and instruments. He was active with the ensemble until 1987. From 1991 to 1993, Oliver played MIDI guitar with the Vancouver group MORE (with Sergio Barroso, Lori Freedman, and Peter Hannan) and since then has been developing personal repertoire for his own performance project involving guitars, MIDI guitar, computer, and electronics, and increasingly writes chamber music integrating his instruments.
I released a CDIcicle Blue Avalanche in 1997 and since then I've performed as soloist and chamber musician with New Music Concerts, Vancouver New Music, Music in the Morning, Standing Wave Ensemble, Ensemble Symposium, Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble, BC Chinese Music Ensemble; and at the at the Body Electric Festival (Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria) the Sacred Music Festival, and New Music America; as well as with musicians/composers François Houle, Paul Dolden, Sergio Barroso, Mei Han, and Jeremy Berkman.
In 2002 I toured 11 Canadian cities with my group Structural Damage with guest improvisers Ron Samworth, Kasuhisa Uchihashi, and Yoshiro Otani, playing on the seasons of Groundswell, Upstream, New Works Calgary, among others. These days you can hear me in the Oliver Yu Duo and Duo Vita. In 1997 I founded a CD label called earsay with composer/pianist Andrew Czink and designer Tanya Petreman for the promotion of new music.
Oliver's music is published on CD by earsay, empreintes DIGITALes, SNE, McGill University Records, ZaDiscs, and CBC Records. Most scores published by johnolivermusic.com. Some older scores and parts available at at Canadian Music Centre (musiccentre.ca).
John Oliver, composer, guitarist's Friend Space (Top 35)
John Oliver, composer, guitarist has 2138 friends.
You can vote again!! Hey John, nice to hear from. It is hard to tell what the total vote tally is, because sometimes the vote count resets, so that means the complete results are not visible. I least i think so.
Weird. But, from what I can SEE, we're doing pretty good. I think the voting stops on Thanksgiving. I forgot you knew Going to City. Remember how Sarah had a dance to it? It was actually a cool dance. She got very very very nervous putting on her dance performances, and didn't relax until she was on a team like The Residents. Anyway, tell me what you are up to. I miss Vancouver- wait, are you still there?
Hi John, sure I remember you! C'est vrai que les grains du sablier ont tendance à filer entre nos doigts… 20 ans tu disais?! Bon, mais l'important, c'est que je vois que tu swingues toujours! Marc-Henri
You got that right! The demise of my fav show "Two New Hours" was devastating! "Jazz Beat" too... I hardly listen anymore, luckily the archive runs deep! Thx again! Norm
I like everything that shakes my belief, it forces me to rethink attitudes and thoughts, take new paths and even, if necessary, start over again. It is an arduous path, but I don't know form richer learning and maturing.
Over time, we learn the most difficult detachments: habits. We become more flexible and more open to changes in the environment. We remain in a state of "readiness", getting and developing skills that allow us to raise flights increasing higher, we won the limitations and learned that IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING!
thanks for the add and the note! great music you're doing as well, i particularly liked 'dust' and 'face in the abstract' --- intriguing stuff you do! best and blessings, msd
About the live show
Online Now!
C'est vrai que les grains du sablier ont tendance à filer entre nos doigts… 20 ans tu disais?! Bon, mais l'important, c'est que je vois que tu swingues toujours! 
