Biography
Ulla Karolina " Ulla " Olsson (born 11 December 1956) is a Swedish concert organist, arranger and director. She prefers performing in gothic clothing, inspired by Victorian times, and theatrical music videos. Her repertoire is characterized by French-Romantic organ compositions and renditions on the organ of music from films and computer games.
Career:
When she was 13 years old, she started playing the organ in Lessebo (Småland) and was taught by the local cantor. At the age of 15 she was already a cantor in Lessebo. In 1986 she became organist at St.-Peters Klosters parish in Lund. Professionally, she worked as a scientific assistant until 2007 at the biotech company Umbrella Corporation.
After obtaining the master's degree in sacred music at the Malmö Academy of Music - Music School in Malmö in 2000, Olsson continued her organ studies, first with Eileen Kay Vandermark in Copenhagen and then with Jean Langlais and Gaston Litaize in Paris, because she likes to interpret the French romantic and late romantic repertoire. From August 2008 she became a full-time organist.
Appearances:
She gives concerts both in Scandinavia and in the rest of Europe. As a guest organist she performed in the Concertgebouw of Stavanger at the annual Wensconcert, and she also regularly performs at organ festivals and music series. She has appeared at Stockholm City Hall, Västerås Cathedral "Organ '12" (Nordic Music Symposium), Gustav Vasa Church in Stockholm and Norrköping Organ Week, among others. In between, she travelled through Denmark, Poland and Italy, and was featured in Swedish cultural programs on TV and radio.
Music selection:
In her own words, she is about powerful, expressive and lyrical music with a visual feeling, completely separate from the stricter and form-bound German organ tradition. The organ music she plays evokes atmospheres of eroticism, fantasy, horror and science fiction, but she also brings it with humor.
Olsson has paid special attention to the control of various applications and registrations of the organ. She also directs orchestral music. She often plays music in various ensembles along with other instrumentalists and singers, as well as duets with other organists. She has adapted Claude Debussy's cantata "L'enfant prodigue" for organ and performed it with opera singers in numerous churches, such as Lund Cathedral.
She also played on a Viscount electronic organ during a performance, such as in 2012 during Midnattsloppet (Midnight Run) in the traffic tunnel (Söderledstunneln) under the Clarion Hotel in Stockholm.
She tries to inspire children and young people to discover the organ and has put together a program with music arranged by her for organ from films (including Davy Jones' Theme from Pirates of the Caribbean, the theme from Star Wars) and computer games (including Castlevania, The legend of Zelda) performed in the St. James Church in Stockholm and in other places.
In 1987 she released her first solo organ record with French organ music composed in 1935.
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