Biography

Biography

Determined to blaze his own musical path, Eric Olsen has crafted a distinguished career in both classical and jazz music, as a
performer, composer, and conductor.

Mr. Olsen’s has many recordings to his credit. Dyad, a collaborative jazz/classical duet with alto saxophonist Louis
Caimano, is his most recent release. The CD features a seamless combination of jazz and classical styles coined The Third
Stream in the 1970’s. There are distinctive compositions by both performers, played with moving artistry. Reviewers have
said that Dyad is “both thoughtful, complex, and heartfelt”, and “manages to compel the listener to feel deeply while
listening to music of tremendous substance.” Paquito D’Rivera, Grammy winning saxophonist and composer, says of Dyad:
“Caimano and Olsen go back and forth through the too often forbidden borders between Classical and Jazz, with the ease of
a couple of North-Mexican coyotes crossing the Rio Grande. Please keep up the good work!”

Other recordings by Mr. Olsen include Jazz Inspired Classics, featuring works by American composers including Copland,
Schuller, Gould, Nancarrow, and others. The works combine jazz rhythms and melodic inflections with classical forms and
compositional techniques. The CD features the world premiere recording of Five Short Pieces (1970) by David N. Baker,
the celebrated jazz educator, and one of Mr. Olsen’s professors at Indiana University. As composer and leader of his long-
standing jazz group Urban Survival, Mr. Olsen has released two CD’s, one with acclaimed tenor saxophonist George
Garzone. John Gilbert of ejazznews referred to Eric as “a top notch jazz artist”. Eric has also performed with guitarists
Bucky Pizzarelli and Ed Cherry, sideman to Dizzy Gillespie.

Mr. Olsen has worked with a wide variety of distinguished artists throughout his career. He has accompanied operatic bass
Kevin Maynor on four recordings, the Grammy-nominated CD The Black Art Song, Jazz Hymns, and From Another
American and Spirituals. The New Mexican newspaper emphatically stated, “Eric Olsen is a singer’s dream of a piano
accompanist”. He recently collaborated with Kevin Maynor and former NJ Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka on his multimedia
work Sisyphus Syndrome, and on a performance of Dorothy Rudd Moore’s opera Frederick Douglas.   He has also
accompanied for the internationally renowned vocal studios of Betty Allen, Klara Barlow, Walter Cassel, Patricia Cioffi,
Margaret Harshaw, James King, Martha Lipton, Giorgio Tozzi, and Virginia Zeani.

Eric Olsen has performed at Carnegie Hall, Birdland, and the Knitting Factory, and overseas in France, Germany, India, and
New Zealand. Mr. Olsen has been a featured soloist with the Livingston Symphony, the Central Jersey Symphony, and the
Orchard Park Symphony.   He has been a featured jazz performer at the AT&T, Berk’s, and Asbury Park Jazz Festivals.
He has given numerous classical and jazz piano recitals in the NY Metropolitan area.

Mr. Olsen is currently Director of Music and Organist at the Union Congregational Church in Montclair, NJ.   He has
conducted Fauré’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Bush’s Christmas Cantata, Flagello’s The Passion of Martin Luther King,
Mecham’s Seven Joys of Christmas, Pinkham’s Christmas Cantata, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio Part I, and Pärt’s Berlin
Mass with members of the NJ Symphony. He has performed the first act of Wagner’s Die Walküre on piano and selections
from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde on organ with his wife, Pamela, an accomplished soprano. He is an Adjunct Faculty
member at Montclair State University, and a member of the Piano Faculty at the Suburban Community Music Center in
Murray Hill, NJ. Mr. Olsen holds two Master’s degrees in Piano Performance and Jazz Studies from Indiana University,
and a Bachelor’s with High Distinction in Piano and Organ Performance from Syracuse University.