John Oliver, composer

News Archive before 2017

Contemporary classical music

Scenes from an Intercultural Marriage Canadian Premiere

SunYatSenposterfinal

June 27, 2015, 7:30 p.m. – “Music Garden” featuring Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra & Rong Jun at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Classical Garden, Vancouver Read More...

"Our City Square" arranged for guitar trio

Our City Square page 1 screenshot

Oliver has arranged his “Our City Square” for guitar trio. Originally written for the various plucked instruments of his Big World Band, Oliver realized after the first performance that the rather modernist approach to rhythm was more appropriately set for an all-guitar ensemble. Read More...

RADIOED - Oliver chamber ensemble piece with DX7 from the archives

I’ve been scanning old scores so I have a complete PDF archive of my music. Here’s a find from 1993.

What happens when you get “radioed?” Think shortwave radio; think messages being “radioed” from control centres to flight decks, etc.; think “Ground control to Major Tom.” Now imagine a music made for instruments and synthesizers that mimic old-time dial radios, and on that radio we’re finding music that sounds something like complex Greek folk music…

Listen to an excerpt here.
Oliver Radioed original title page
Back in the early 1990s, Macintosh computers had MacDraw, a drawing program that I used to use for title pages. This is a copy of the dot-matrix printout!


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Orchid Ensemble commission "Celestial Storehouse" completed

Last week I completed the commissioned work for the Orchid Ensemble, a work designed for concert and theatrical/multimedia presentation entitled Celestial Storehouse. Read More...