Olivia Block

Bio

Olivia Block is a contemporary composer and sound artist who combines field recordings, scored segments for acoustic instruments, and electronically generated sound. Block works with recorded media, chamber ensembles, video, and site-specific sound installations.

She has performed throughout Europe, America, and Japan in tours and festivals including Sonic Light, Dissonanze, Archipel, Angelica, Sunoni per il Popolo, Outer Ear, and many others. Her works have premiered at La Biennale di Venezia 52nd International Festival of Contemporary Music, and she has completed residencies and premiered works at Mills College of Music and The Berklee College of Music. She has taught master classes at several additional universities.

Block has created sound installations for public sites and exhibition spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the library at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, the Lincoln Conservatory Fern Room in Chicago, and at the “Echoes Through the Mountains” exhibit at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Her 2008 DVD release with film projector artists Sandra Leah Gibson and Luis Recoder, Untitled, on SOS editions, has been screened at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Expanded Cinema symposium at the Tate Modern in London. Her release Mobius Fuse was voted one of the best albums of the decade by Pitchfork.

Block has published recordings through Sedimental, either/OAR, and Cut, among other labels.