Biography
Isabelle Olivier is a French jazz harpist and composer. She studied natural sciences before training on the Celtic harp at the Conservatory in Vallée de Chevreuse, graduating in 1984, and then on the concert harp at the National Conservatory of Music in Lyon, where she graduated with honours in 1988.
Olivier composed the music for Agnès Varda’s documentary The Gleaners and I (2000) and its follow-up The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002). She has recorded a dozen albums of her own compositions, including My Foolish Harp (2009), and has collaborated with musicians such as Peter Erskine, Louis Sclavis and Rez Abbasi. In 2015 she became the first composer to receive the Villa Le Nôtre prize in Versailles. She has taught harp at the Arts School of Marcoussis since 1993.
