“This musician [...] never fails to magical aesthetics
attached to it. Alone or faced with electronic machines by
Olivier Sens, she develops a language almost Monkish,
refusing any gratuitous virtuosity in favor of an
exploration of the potentialities of this instrument.”
Bernard Loupias - Le Nouvel Observateur
“Between the notes and silence, harmony and dissonance,
purity and artifice, the heart of Isabelle Oliver continues
to swing. This graceful indecision gives all her wealth to
expressive music and narrative, which is finally able to be
collected without being consensually crass.”Richard Robert -
Les Inrockuptibles
Isabelle Olivier does not prompt to write about the music
but to rush to the instrument
Read more
“This musician [...] never fails to magical aesthetics
attached to it. Alone or faced with electronic machines by
Olivier Sens, she develops a language almost Monkish,
refusing any gratuitous virtuosity in favor of an
exploration of the potentialities of this instrument.”
Bernard Loupias - Le Nouvel Observateur
“Between the notes and silence, harmony and dissonance,
purity and artifice, the heart of Isabelle Oliver continues
to swing. This graceful indecision gives all her wealth to
expressive music and narrative, which is finally able to be
collected without being consensually crass.”Richard Robert -
Les Inrockuptibles
Isabelle Olivier does not prompt to write about the music
but to rush to the instrument. She does not seek to keep
music as a sweet and intimate secret, but raises the thirst
for transmiting it, while sharing the good news : that jazz
is not dead.” Mathieu Durand - Citizenjazz.com
“We fell in love with this harp that fits into a beautiful
quintet featuring an original and innovative repertoire.
Beautiful music, wild and free as the ocean, open to all
directions and in all climates, for which each composes and
infuses his own poetry to all.”Lionel Eskenazi - Jazzman
“Who could make the harp and the harpist an ethereal idea,
Isabelle Olivier brings a surprising contradiction. Though
not to imagine by any means a fierce harpy against beauty.
She is primarily a jazz musician, experimenting with her
instrument (and the complicity of Olivier Sens on computers)
shapes her new intriguing album, Island # 41 which holds
one's attention.”Michel Contat - Télérama Sortir
“In any event, she makes the most of the depth and
strength of her instrument, equating it to the colors and
singing of Ocean. [...] she associates with pleasure
strings and winds to deliver music which is very open,
malleable, to address an unexpected shore via a unique
confrontation between the instrument and electronic textures
by Olivier Sens that appear to be timeless.” Robert Latxague
- Jazz Magazine
“Four years of waiting for the new disc Isabelle Olivier
[...] and this is not the least of her qualities that has
managed instead to make an album that is dominated by the
intimacy of listening around shared compositions by Isabelle
Olivier and his guests. Work in itself, it is almost
artisanal, giving rise to the raw and refined. An album very
zen where
everything is played with intelligence, buttoned foil. An
album where each musician works the material in its own way
with the same manner of refining and denudation and from
that emerges the richness of this harp with which Isabelle
Olivier reveals here all possibilities. All there is,
harmonics weave superbly with the sounds of the accordion to
mutinous parentheses (Wae) or moving (My Foolish Harp)
singing whispered Youn Sun Nah impassioned speech to a
particularly inspired Sclavis. As for Peter Erskine, here is
the sign of a great duo (harp / drums) put in full light
such subtle discourse of Isabella Oliver. Here the harp is
both discrete and present, percussive, harmonic, melodic and
heavenly. We remove without regret the mix by Olivier Sens
at the end of the album where the musicians come together
artificially in order not to break the spell of this album
between dreams and whispers.” Jean-Marc Gelin - Jazz
Magazine
“Before listening to Isabelle Olivier, you should leave
aside all the secular cliches circulating on the harp. For
years this young woman has liked to rub the instrument of
the Muses to all sorts of musical backgrounds: computer
Olivier Sens (duet Island 41) or the saxophone Sébastien
Texier (Quintet Ocean). If the harp falls from her pedestal
for hanging out with jazz, improvised and electronic music,
it still comes out as even more, mysterious and captivating.
In her new album, My Foolish Harp, the musician moves on
by inviting to the party the delicate voice of Youn Sun Nah,
the prestigious drums of Peter Erskine, the moving Louis
Sclavis on clarinet or accordion player David Venitucci.” M.
Durand - La Terrasse
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