CLASSICAL MUSIC

He was born in Durres, Albania, on the 4th of February 1975, and starts to study violin at the age of 3 thanks to his mother, violin player and teacher. Defined “enfant prodige” for his incredible interpretative qualities, he performs for the first time at the age of 5. When he is 7 he brings on the stage his first recital and, at the age of 13, he graduates with honours at the “Superior Arts Institute” in Tirana. In the same year he wins also the Golden Medal as Best Player of his country. Thanks to a scholarship, he arrives in Italy and immediately starts an intensive classical music tour that brings him to perform in some of the most important concert halls in Italy like: Palazzo Barberini, Villa Medici, Chiesa degli Artisti and Accademia di Francia. In this tour he plays the main Violin Concerts written by composers like Wieniawski, Sibelius, Glasunow, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Mendelssohn and Bartok. Barely 14, he surprises the audience playing perfectly the 24 Capricci by Paganini that are considered, due to their difficulty, the hardest challenge for every violin virtuoso. At the age of 15 he wins the special award “Rodolfo Lipizer”, one of the most prestigious international competition for classical violinists. Two years later, at 17, he graduates at the S.Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, achieving again the maximum mark and becoming the youngest violinist graduated in the whole history of the Italian Conservatory. In 1992 he wins the Mozart Award that consent him to gain the admittance at the famous Mozarteum in Salzburg. Here, following the lead of the American Italian Maestro Ruggiero Ricci, who is in this period his real mentor, collects coveted first prizes, like the international “Foyer des Artistes” for the high interpretation of Paganini’s works. In this period he is invited to play in many theatres of Centre and Northern Europe, but the most important concert is the one in the Salzburg Landestheater where M° Ricci lets Olen play his precious and unique Stradivari. He concludes his Austrian experience graduating with honours, for the third time, in one year only instead of the four required. After Salzburg he moves to the United States of America, to Detroit, where he plays as soloist in the principal cities of the Midwest. He performs also in two of the most important American theatres: the Masonic Temple Theatre of Detroit and the Silk Road Theatre of Chicago. Even if he is very young, the eco of his talent takes him to play in some of the most prestigious European and International theatres.

JAZZ, POP AND NEW SOUNDS

In 1993, he comes back to Italy called directly from Pippo Baudo to participate to the “ National TV Contest for Musicians” in the TV show “Partita Doppia” where he wins the first prize performing in the Paganini’s Capricci that he re-arranges in a particular jazz way. After the show, the main Italian newspapers define him the “new Paganini”. A year later, he moves to New York where he starts to explore different kinds of music: jazz, pop, soul, rap, country and ethnic. His favourite clubs, in this period, are the Tabac Café and the Time Café where, every night, he performs with musicians, not yet famous, like Maroon 5, Lenny Kravitz and Sheryl Crow. Playing with these artists, he widens his horizons like a violinist but also like a polyhedral musician and makes him understand to be attract from pop and contemporary music. In New York he also cooperates with the famous composer Danny Elfman. Back in Rome, for several years, he plays at “Il Locale”. Here, he performs with, among others, Daniele Silvestri, Max Gazzè, Alex Britti, Carmen Consoli and Sergio Cammariere. In some of these sessions he plays with Jacob Dylan and Pearl Jam. In this same period, his classical career enriched with the foundation of the Liebhaber Konzert Trio (LKT), composed of guitar (Giuseppe Pistone), flute (Alessandra D’Andrea) and violin. With this formation he plays Rossini, Mozart, Haydn, Debussy and Piazzolla’s works completely re arranged and re adapted by the three young artists. They travel around Europe until 1999. It has to be reminded the partecipation of the LKT at the 40th Spoleto Festival and at the “Estate Catanese” organized by the Italian songwriter Franco Battiato. Olen, in this period, plays also in an ethnical music group, the Meridia, and in popular Balkan music group , the Ogila.

COLLABORATIONS AND POP PRODUCTIONS

During these years, thanks to his skills and versatility, well known in the music world, several Italian pop music artists ask him to collaborate. In 1997 he meets Lucio Dalla that, impressed by his huge talent, asks Olen to play with him in the World Tour that enables him to perform in some of the most important theatres of the world. The climax of this experience is the exhibition for the Holy Father, John Paul II, for the Eucharistic Congress in front of 2 millions people. In this concert he has also the occasion to play with the rock legend Bob Dylan and with the ingenious jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani. In this period Olen plays also with Franco Califano and in 2001 he starts the tour with Anna Oxa that lasts one year. After a concert in the Sporting Club, in Monte Carlo, he doesn’t let escape the possibility to play in a jam session with Prince. Among his strongest collaboration has to be mentioned the Sergio Cammariere’s one that persist since 15 years and, from 2005, with the eccentric songwriter Simone Cristicchi. For this artist Olen writes, in 2007, the strings part of the Sanremo Festival winning song “Ti regalerò una rosa”.

From Lucio Dalla he learns the “know how” of music productions and, in 2000, he starts his career of musician-producer with the roman songwriter Veronica Lock, by which he publishes the album “Come un satellite che va”, with the record company Warner Music Italia, that reaches the top-ten of Mtv Italy. In 2003 he founds “Olen Art”, his record company, by which he produces the album of Enrico Giaretta, titled “ Sulle ali della musica”. In this project Olen cooperates with extraordinary musicians like Pharrell Williams, Tony Levin, Fabrizio Bosso and Daniela Di Bonaventura, everyone of them is a special Olen’s friend. He also undertakes a series of concerts with Enrico Giaretta, a refined songwriter and pianist, that lead him to perform around the world and in several avant-garde clubs like the Blue Note in Milan and the Piano’s in New York. In 2004 he produces his first Enrico Giaretta’s music video “La Fabbrica delle Nuvole” and, in the spring of 2007, thanks to the collaboration of Alenia Aeronautica, he realizes the second Giaretta’s video using a last generation military airplane, the Eurofighter. One of the song he writes with Enrico Giaretta, “ Tutta la vita in un momento”, translated in English with the title of “Back in town” and sung by the Canadian artist Matt Dusk, ascends the charts and achieve the first positions in Japan, Canada, Holland and gets in the international top100.

SOUND-TRACKS

One of the strongest Olen’s passions is the one for movies and cinema, in particular for the writing of soundtracks. He composes and produces the music for the movie “L’Italiano” by Ennio de Dominicis, together with Sergio Cammariere, and for the Maria Sole Tognazzi’s drama “Non finisce qui”. He intervenes in the realization of the Giacomo Campiotti’s “Time to love” soundtrack and he composes and produces the music for the short film “Diamonds, Bullets and Fate”, winner of the Gold Grand Jury Award at the Houston Texas Film in 2005. In 2006 Olen participates, as special guest with Eliza Duscku, to the Euro Video Grand Prix and to several Tv shows like “Domenica In”, “In bocca al lupo” and “Novecento”.

Olen Cesari is not only an incredible violin virtuoso but a full-blown master of stylistic versatility. He is an excellent classical musician, with a unique talent that ravish people mind performing on Paganini, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Mendelssohn; an histrionic and particular jazz and pop composer; an unbelievable performer and improviser and, last but not least, a hits producer and arranger. He is that kind of universal musician that so rarely we encounter today. He is able to mix different styles and sounds turning them into travels toward emotions and fantasies that lead us around the world.