My first composition teacher, Wolfgang Plagge, is an excellent choral composer, and choral music is such a natural and organic place to begin as a composer because you’re writing for the human voice. When I was growing up, my parents were always listening to a variety of music in the house, including choral music, so it’s always been a part of my life. I never had a moment in which I decided to become a composer though it was something I had been so passionate about from a young age, and I never thought of doing anything else. I didn’t read music until later on because I just wanted to do keep improvising and creating things. As a child, I had a pretty good ear and was fairly quickly able to hear which notes worked together and which ones didn’t. I started playing piano and improvising when I was about five years old. His wind band works are published by Boosey & Hawkes.įor more information, please visit or find Ola on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. His choral and piano works are published by Walton Music and include titles such as the Sunrise Mass, Northern Lights, Ubi Caritas, Tundra, and Ave Generosa. Ola’s recordings include the Decca Classics albums Ola Gjeilo (2016) and Winter Songs (2017), featuring Tenebrae, Voces8, and the Choir of Royal Holloway.

Composer and pianist Ola Gjeilo was born in Norway in 1978 and moved to the United States in 2001 to begin his composition studies at the Juilliard School in New York City, where he currently resides.

Tundra by ola gjeilo