Ola Gjeilo

Composer-pianist Ola Gjeilo crafts solo albums marked by a meditative, cinematic sensibility, while his choral output often incorporates his own piano improvisations during recording sessions. Born in 1978 to Inge and Anne-May Gjeilo, he grew up in a household filled with an eclectic mix of classical, jazz, pop, and folk music. He started piano lessons at five and could read music by seven, studying composition with Wolfgang Plagge before entering the Norwegian Academy of Music in 1999. He moved to the Juilliard School in 2001, spent time at the Royal College of Music in London where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 2004, and returned to Juilliard to complete a master’s degree in 2006. His music appeared on the 2003 electronic compilation Zen, and his first solo release, Stone Rose, came out on the 2L label in 2007, spotlighting his solo piano work alongside select chamber pieces. He served as composer-in-residence for the Phoenix Chorale in 2009 and 2010. Gjeilo concentrates chiefly on solo piano and choral music, with occasional wind symphony scores, each category issued by a separate publisher: Walton Music for choral works, Boosey & Hawkes for wind band pieces, and Chester Music for keyboard compositions. His early choral setting Phoenix from 2008 has been recorded repeatedly; by the early 2020s more than 125 of his pieces had been captured by himself and other artists. Although independent choirs frequently perform his choral music, Gjeilo is perhaps best known for the solo albums he issues under his own name, which have appeared on the Decca label since 2016. The first of these was Ola Gjeilo: Voices, Piano, Strings, followed by Winter Songs in 2017 with the Choir of Royal Holloway, University of London, and the solo piano recordings Night in 2020 and Dawn in 2022. He lives in New York and works as a freelance composer.