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Olga Witte

Composer, arranger, pianist, church organist and ethnomusicologist. Olga Witte is presently studying composition as an advanced postgraduate student at The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus. She has a MA from University of Aarhus in musicology and anthropology, and is educated church organist from Vestervig Kirkemusikskole.

She is a jazz pianist and church organist, and she plays Balinese gamelan.​ Witte's knowledge of Balinese gamelan is based on longterm ethnomusicological fieldworks in the period 2005-2020. When Olga Witte is in Bali she lives in and takes part in different gamelan groups in the area Kecamatan Sukawati. Olga Witte composes music that explores the dynamics between experimental jazz, contemporary music and Balinese gamelan, and has presented her experimental organ music in Denmark as well as abroad. She also composes and arranges for other groups such as Travelling Tribes, KALAHA and Aarhus Jazz Orchestra.

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"When Olga Witte takes control and the music becomes more composed than improvised, a crew of two winds and pipe organ can perform wonders." "Mads Hæsum Christensen, Seismograf, January 2022)

"...is Olga Witte the Jon Lord of our time? Just a thought! The woman with the largest instrument of the day had composed Onkel Alberts Rumtid, inspired by a children's book of the same name [The time and space of uncle Albert by Russell Stannard] and his theory of relativity. And here the hymn dust was seriously blown out of the organ pipes in a frighteningly violent intro. One imagined the sound of the creation of the world, followed by Vogel's alto sax, which as a fresh sprout in the silence after chaos symbolized the origin of life

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