Olivia Block

Olivia Block is a contemporary composer and sound artist who combines field recordings, scored segments for acoustic instruments, and electronically generated sound. Her recorded work seeks to introduce and ultimately reconcile nature with artifice in the realms of music and sound. In the process, "organic" sound becomes subtly process, digitized, and abstracted; "inorganic" sound becomes self-replicating and animate; and "musical" elements such as chamber instruments are defamiliarized from their traditional associations, freeing them to participate in the larger aesthetic possibilities of 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 Dissonanze, Archipel, Angelica, Outer Ear, and many others. She has completed residencies at Mills College of Music and The Berklee College of Music and 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.

Block has published recordings through Sedimental, and/Oar, and Cut.

In the September 2008 she joined the sound department faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

• 1997 - Tunnels / Stairwell [with John Grzinich & Seth Nehil] - 320 Kbps
• 1999 - Pure Gaze - 320 Kbps
• 2001 - Mobius Fuse - 320 Kbps
• 2005 - Change Ringing - 320 Kbps
• 2006 - Heave To - 320 Kbps
• 2010 - Teem [with Kyle Bruckmann] - 320 Kbps
• 2011 - Resolution [with Greg Kelley] - 320 Kbps
• 2011 - MOSS [with Molly Berg, Stephen Vitiello & Steve Roden] - 320 Kbps
• 2013 - Karren - 320 Kbps
• 2015 - Aberration of Light - 320 Kbps

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