Olga Bell is an American musician, music producer, composer, and singer-songwriter.
Background
She was born in Moscow, Russia, raised in Anchorage, Alaska and is currently based in Brooklyn, New New York Bell started playing the piano at age seven, after moving with her mother from Moscow to Alaska, and made her public debut two years later.
Education
Bell performed an original composition for piano and orchestra with her hometown Anchorage Symphony at age twelve, and at sixteen she was a concerto soloist with the Anchorage Civic Orchestra.While still in high school, she attended the Aspen Music Festival and School on a scholarship. As a chamber musician, Bell was also fellow of The Banff Centre and Yale’s Norfolk Festival, where she studied with Claude Frank and members of the Juilliard, Tokyo and Saint St. Petersburg String Quartets.
Career
A classically trained pianist and self-taught electronic music producer, she has dabbled in a wide range of genres, including classical, electronic popular, and Russian folk. Best known for Край (Krai), a tribute to her Russian heritage, and Diamonite, an album she produced with Gunnar Olsen and Jason Nazary under the moniker BELL, she has also played in Chairlift and Dirty Projectors and collaborated with Tom Vek under the name Nothankyou. In August 2005, after graduating from the New England Conservatory, Bell moved to New York City, bought a laptop and started recording herself, singing into the built-in mic and making beats.
From 2005 to 2010, Bell taught piano lessons and accompanied theater auditions while receiving a kind of secondary education around the city’s open mics and in studios, developing a live show, forming a band, self-producing and self-releasing an European Parliament (2008) and the full-length album Diamonite (2011).
Her voice has been heralded as “lustrous” by Consequence of Sound and “powerful” by The New York Times. She has also been noted by The New York Times for her "bubbly, glitchy electronic popular songs." She’s remixed Chairlift, Son Lux and Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Partita.
In 2009 she was selected by composer Osvaldo Golijov and soprano Dawn Upshaw for a workshop and concert at Carnegie Hall. In 2011 she received the a Jerome Fund Grant from the American Composers Forum, to aid in the completion of her first large-scale composition Krai.
The album was released to critical acclaim in 2014 after a sold-out premiere at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Since its premiere the piece has been reprised in Bell’s original electro-acoustic arrangement for twelve musicians, as well as a version for solo voice with orchestra. Krai was considered "fresh and new" by the Telegraph. Olga Bell makes original music, remixes and videos under her own name.
As half of Nothankyou, she makes dance music with British musician Tom Vek.
In 2013 she directed a video for the group’s single Oyster. From 2011 to 2013 Bell toured as a vocalist and keyboardist with Chairlift and Dirty Projectors.
On July 21, 2015 Bell released a new single from an European Parliament called Incitation. On August 12, 2015 she released a video for another European Parliament track, “Goalie”, which she co-directed with Christina Ladwig.
The video received its premiere on Nowness.