Oli Bott
Biography Oli Bott
Oli Bott
tudied vibraphone and composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston with teachers such as Gary Burton and Bob Brookmeyer, graduating 'summa cum laude'. After completing his studies, he moved to Berlin where he now works as a freelance vibraphonist and composer. The Arts Council of Berlin has been a regular supporter, awarding him both scholarships as a vibraphonist and commissions as a composer for his own jazz orchestra, which he also conducts. Oli Bott has been awarded many prizes, including the 'NDR-Musikpreis' for bigband conductors, 1st prize at the Leipzig Improvisation Competition and the Wayne Shorter Award, USA. His concerts throughout Europe have been broadcast on TV and the radio.
Oli loves to interpret good music of all styles and feels comfortable improvising his own stories on works of classical, jazz, rock and world music. His portfolio thus ranges from the Romanian rock band ZMEI3 to the collaboration with cellist Anna Carewe and the Sheridan Ensemble (cross-genre ensemble from baroque and classical to jazz, rock and improvisation) to his jazz trio with the fantasy stories CHRONICLES OF JAZZ, in which compositional giants from classical music, jazz and more come together, and his jazz quartet with his miniatures CONTENT, from which narratives are knitted in large improvisations. He played at festivals like WOMAD Festival, Electric Castle Festival, Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele, Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival, Niedersächsische Musiktage, Beethovenfest Bonn, WDR Jazz Festival Köln, Händel Festspiele Halle, Musikfest Stuttgart und Kurt Weill Fest Dessau.
Since 2001 Oli has been teaching improvisation to classically trained musicians in Berlin and gives workshops for the education programme of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Berlin University of Popular Arts, the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus and the Landesmusikakademie Berlin.
In 2022, he was commissioned by the German Bundestag to compose a 60-minute homage to Haydn's work to mark the 100th anniversary of Germany's national anthem, which he produced with Anna Carewe, Markus Stockhausen, Oliver Potratz and Eric Schaefer and which is published on dasdeutschlandlied.de.
