Bauhaus Festival 2023-2025
Selected for the Bauhaus Festival in 2023, 2024 and 2025, organised by saxophonist, composer and producer John Harle.
In 2023, Olivia composed music for Werner Graeff's Composition 1 (1922) and Composition 2 (revised in 1959 and 1977), experimental films by the Bauhaus artist and former student. The works were performed by the Bauhaus Band, conducted by John Harle.
For the 2024 festival, Olivia composed two original works inspired by the continuing influence of Bauhaus design. Ercol explores the transformation of wood into furniture through evolving rhythmic patterns, drawing inspiration from Steve Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood. Sassoon, commissioned by the hair company, reflects the revolutionary designs of Vidal Sassoon through angular, jazz-influenced textures. Olivia also created the accompanying music video for Ercol.
In 2025, she created an original short film exploring the legacy of the Bauhaus movement through Brutalist architecture, dance and poetry, inspired by the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk ("the total work of art"). The film features choreography by Shea Sullivan and reflects the movement's commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration.
My approach to Graeff's compositions, which each repeat twice, was to create different pieces of music that work against each other for each segment to help form different impressions from the same piece of art for the listener. For Composition 2, the biggest difference is an emotional one, the first piece is tense while the other is strident. For Composition 1, it is more the rhythmical differences, where one piece works to ignore the movement of the squares, whereas the other is actively mirroring it.
