Oliver Glissant

Based in Brooklyn, NY, Olivier Glissant is a composer, conductor, producer and founder of Blacksalt Records. He created the Brooklyn Orchestra in 2015, a symphonic ensemble dedicated to new music and contemporary composers, working to fuse kinds of music that rarely meet on the classical stage. Glissant spent his childhood in his native Martinique, then went on to study piano in Paris before attending Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1988, where he studied music production & engineering, composition and conducting. His influences are many, including South American, Caribbean and African music, as well as European classical music. This brought him to collaborate through the years with Philip Glass, Norah Jones, Bill Frisell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Vinicius Cantuaria, Pete Seeger, John Zorn, Tico da Costa, Thiago Thiago de Mello, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Yasmin Levy.

He more recently conducted his own creations with the Brooklyn Orchestra - Symphony No. 1, the tone poems "Charmeuse de Serpents", "Echaurren", and "Les Nuits d'Egypte" – at Carnegie Hall and the United Nations in New York, and in Paris in the Panthéon-Sorbonne's Cour d'Honneur. He is currently working on new orchestral pieces, some piano and chamber music, an opera, and an electronic/electric record which will blend synthesizers, drum machines, drums&percussion, electric guitar and bass, acoustic instruments and vocals. Under his artistic direction the Brooklyn Orchestra is preparing its first season at Roulette Theater in Brooklyn for 2019/20.