Acclaimed jazz harpist and composer Isabelle Olivier explores Impressionism in music and the visual arts with her genre-melding new album. Out now in Europe and March 21, 2025 in the US and Canada via Rewound Echoes, Impressions brings together jazz and classical influences via a remarkably versatile electro-acoustic ensemble.

Isabelle Olivier, harp and composition

Tom Olivier piano, accordion and composition

Raphael Olivier, electronics

Anya Brumfield, violin

Caroline Jesalva, violin

Wilfred Farquharson, viola

J Holzen, cello

Ernie Adams, drums

"Leaping from traditional repertoire to time- and space-tripping avant-garde, the musicians fuse groove and improvisation, and perform with a kind of measured steadiness that only could be delivered by their highly skilled hands." – Denise Sullivan, DownBeat review of OASIS

"[Olivier's] bold approach is characterized by permanent risk-taking and a strong desire to collaborate with musicians and artists from various backgrounds." – Joel Chevassus, 6Moons.com

The French Impressionists revolutionized the art world by privileging the emotional and spiritual perception of the natural world over its literal reproduction. Hailing from France, harpist Isabelle Olivier has always felt an innate affinity for Impressionism and discovered its echoes within her other artistic passions, primarily the parallel worlds of jazz and classical music.

On her vibrant new album, Impressions, Olivier conjures a bold musical landscape from the lush and stirring hues of her diverse influences. Inspired by tenor sax icon John Coltrane's revered composition "Impressions, " she explores the confluences of jazz and Impressionism with a painter's instinct for complementary colors, forms and textures.

"I think about Impressionism as a combination between elegance, minimalism, spectral notions, feelings and vibes – things that you can feel but you cannot explain, " Olivier describes. "Looking at Impressionist art is like becoming part of nature, to the point where you forget that you're human. I love this feeling."

Out now in Europe and in the US/Canada on March 21, 2025 via Olivier's Rewound Echoes imprint, Impressions features a versatile and genre-fluid ensemble that includes the harpist's sons – pianist and accordionist Tom Olivier-Beuf and electronic musician Raphael Olivier – along with a string quartet and drummer Baptiste Thiebault. In addition to Olivier's Impressionism-inspired compositions, the album is interspersed with a number of group improvisations that suggest or were suggested by impressionistic ideas – from the misty, crepuscular "Fog on the Lake" to the stark, pointillist "A Pizzicato Life."

With its many references to Chicago art and artists, Impressions brings together the two metropolises that Olivier calls home – the Windy City and the City of Lights, Chicago and Paris. The album bridges various landmarks for the harpist, including her roots in jazz and classical music, as well as her love for aural and visual art. These seemingly divergent poles have never been separate in her mind – she was introduced to her instrument in the first place by Duchess, the harp-playing cat in Walt Disney's jazz-inflected 1970 animated film The Aristocats. Not long after finishing her classical studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Lyon, she co-founded the jazz quartet Océan with the Moutin Brothers, well known figures on the French and American jazz scenes.

Olivier recalls the first time that she was deeply affected by visual art. "It was a painting from Van Gogh, " she says, recalling the first of many experiences that left her with the suspicion that she has a minor form of Stendahl Syndrome, the condition of being affected physically by beautiful art or objects.

"I was just shocked. I had goosebumps, then I wanted to cry. I didn't understand it, but I was so moved."

Van Gogh's work is suggested by the opening track of Impressions, "Fleurs de Soleil, " which Olivier wrote in tribute to her 94-year-old mother. The title refers obliquely to Van Gogh's famed series of "Sunflowers" paintings, which the composer was stunned to see grouped together in an Amsterdam exhibition. The literal French translation of "sunflowers, " though, is "tournesols, " which didn't capture the tenderness that Olivier wanted to express towards her mother's final months.

With Olivier-Beuf's accordion alternately suggesting French and Eastern European folk rhythms, "Eclats" draws inspiration from the musicological expeditions of Béla Bartók. "Cezanne" makes reference to the titular Impressionist in its soft, lush colors, and forms a diptych with the breezy, propulsive "Bike, " named for a piece by Chicago-based illustrator Darcy Day Zoells. The melding of harp and electronics on "An Open Window" depicts Olivier's stay on a picturesque island on Lake Michigan, which she says supplied her with, "a wonderful soundtrack of birds, and waves and wind."

The gentle rocking of waves is suggested by the string figures of "The Boating Party, " which is based on a painting by the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt. "Forlane" strikingly adapts a composition by the Impressionist composer Maurice Ravel, while Olivier-Beuf indulges in a bit of modern-day Impressionism of his own with his composition "Evanescence, " swooningly capturing the evasive ethereality hinted at by its title. "Tango" takes an impassioned cue from the music of the brilliant Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, whose studies with the French composer and pedagogue Nadia Boulanger provides a spiritual link to the Gallic heart of the album.

"La Gare" is a painting come to life, providing a soundtrack to Claude Monet's "Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, " which resides at the Art Institute of Chicago. Not only is Olivier's composition built on a locomotive foundation, but the ensemble adds a variety of voices and soundtracks to bring the locale to imaginative life. Paired with the album's closer, Coltrane's familiar title tune, it ends the vivid proceedings with another diptych, pairing a train with the Trane. Like in so much of Olivier's work, she manages to find echoes that are playful, resonant and beautiful by making unexpected connections.

As a jazz harpist and composer, Isabelle Olivier has charted an unconventional path throughout her career, forging interdisciplinary connections within the arts and exploring various musical styles. Artistic and human exploration through the harp has allowed her to broaden her musical horizons across disciplines and territories. Olivier has recorded a dozen albums featuring her own compositions and has traveled to 25 countries to present collaborative and interactive projects. In 2021 she celebrated three decades on stage with Smile, an album that paid homage to Charlie Chaplin and Emily Dickinson, Cannonball Adderley and James Blake. Olivier has collaborated with such exceptional artistic personalities as Oscar-winning filmmaker Agnes Varda, acclaimed drummer Peter Erskine, and innovative guitarist Rez Abbasi. As the first composer laureate of the Villa Le Nôtre in Versailles, she was commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017 to compose and perform an artistic response to "Gauguin, the Alchemist." Supported by the FACE Foundation for her OASIS project with Rez Abbasi, she is passionate about intercultural and intergenerational intersections.

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