A French composer born in 1950 in Paris who died in 2000.
A composer and concert pianist, Olivier Greif, after studying at the Paris Conservatory, was a pupil of Luciano Berio at the Juilliard School in New York in 1969 before becoming his assistant at Santa Fe Opera (1970). He subsequently taught at the Académie-Festival des Arcs, taking charge of its artistic direction until 1986. In 1976, spiritual research took him away from his creative activity. In the 1990s, he returned to his musical career with an intense productivity and some important commissions. His music deploys, within a web of polyphony, original ideas and religious or secular reminiscences. He particularly likes to compose for the piano (Sonate dans le goût ancien, 1974; Le tombeau de Ravel, 1975), the voice (Lettres de Westerbork, 1993; Three settings of Musset, 2000), not forgetting chamber music (Sonate de requiem, 1992), a few symphonic and concertante works (Durch Adams Fall, 1999) and his opera Nô (commissioned by Paris Opera, 1981).
