HWS News
12 June 2024 • Arts • Faculty From Geneva to San Antonio: Olivieri Debuts New Compositions
Associate Professor of Music Mark Olivieri premieres new works at both the Geneva Music Festival and the 2024 National Flute Convention.
During the Geneva Music Festival, held from May 18 to June 9, Associate Professor of Music Mark Olivieri debuted a new piano quintet, “Artifacts of a Valiant Past.”
Part of the festival’s light-dark theme, Olivieri’s composition shared the “Night and Day” program with pieces by Franz Joseph Haydn and Alexander Scriabin, reflecting the movement “from dawn’s first light to glimmering moonlight…and remind[ing] us of the magic of this quotidian transformation.”
This summer, Olivieri’s flute choir piece “Wind, Wings, Larks & Sparrows” will premiere at the National Flute Convention in San Antonio, Texas, from August 1-4. Commissioned by flutist and Virginia Commonwealth University Professor Tabatha Easley, the piece will be performed by university students selected from across the country and adjudicated by a panel of professional flutists across the U.S.
Olivieri is a composer whose music has been performed throughout the United States and abroad in such venues as the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Sibelius Academy, the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, Glinka Concert Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia and Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, Iceland. His commissions include works for the Rothko Piano Trio, the Society for New Music, Trio Medellin, the Golden Gate Brass Ensemble, and the Porto Alegre New Music Ensemble of Brazil. Critically acclaimed by the New York Times, his compositions have been described as “glittering” and “pop-infused,” inspired as much by Black Sabbath and Thelonious Monk as by traditional concert music. Olivieri, who joined the faculty in 2010, holds a Ph.D. in music from the University at Buffalo, as well as a master’s from Ithaca College Music Conservatory and a bachelor’s from Heidelberg College.
Pictured above, Associate Professor of Music Mark Olivieri speaks to HWS community members before a performance of “Catarina and James” in Froelich Hall in the Gearan Center for the Performing Arts.
