Christian Olson
About
Christian Olson is a versatile and innovative conductor who has been invited to perform in prestigious venues and festivals in both the US and Europe, including the Musikverein in Vienna and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California. Mr. Olson was most recently the Conducting Fellow with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Assistant Conductor at Indiana University where he conducted numerous staged operas and symphonic repertoire. He has also served as assistant conductor at the Chicago Summer Opera. Mr. Olson has participated in the Ferenc Fricsay International Conducting Competition, the Lányi International Conducting Competition, the Lake Como International Conducting Competition, and the German Institute of Conducting Competition. He has also been featured in a PBS documentary on the life of Thomas Wilkins. Additionally, his recent performance of Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette has been featured onThe Hector Berlioz Website. Conductors he has studied under and worked with include Sir Roger Norrington, Franz Welser-Möst, Osmo Vänskä, Stéphane Denève,Robert Spano, Nicolás Pasquet, and Giancarlo Guererro. His primary teachers include Arthur Fagen, Thomas Wilkins, and Dr. Paul C. Phillips. In addition to his conducting engagements, Mr. Olson is in demand as a vocal coach in a wide array of operatic and art song repertoire. He is currently researching and writing on the music of Hector Berlioz as a DMA candidate at Indiana University.
His fields of expertise as a tutor include music history, theory, conducting, and violin.
The needs of the student as determined by their levels and goals are always the first consideration. My teaching is predominantly repertoire based as I feel students benefit most from working with real contributions to western music.
BA Music History, University of North Texas
MM Conducting, Indiana University
DMA Conducting, Indiana University
Recommended General Surveys of Music History:
Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. Tenth edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.
Taruskin, Richard. The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Recommended Music Theory Text:
Laitz, Steven G. The Complete Musician: An Integrated Approach to Theory, Analysis, and Listening. Fourth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Texts for violin and conducting to be based on the needs of the individual student.