Biography

Los Angeles and Seattle based cellist and composer Olivia Marckx (b.1999) writes music that is colorful, inventive and athletic. As a teenager, Olivia spent time busking at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Through her music, she aims to channel the high octane atmosphere and immediacy of audience connection in that space. Further inspiration comes from old Hollywood dance movies, Scottish fiddling, virtuosic violin show pieces and early Modernism.

Olivia received honors at the 2024 Music for Unity National Composition Competition. Her works have been commissioned/and or performed by violinists Simone Porter, Blake Pouliot and Aubree Oliverson, The Lyris String Quartet, and the Pacific, South Coast and San Fernando Valley Symphonies. Her compositions and arrangements have been featured at the Aspen Music Festival, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, Carnegie Hall (Weill Hall), and on the Violin Channel.

As a cellist, Olivia was recently a top prize winner at the Coeur d’Alene National Young Artists Competition and participated in the prestigious 2024 International Naumburg Cello Competition. Olivia has soloed with the Seattle Symphony, Colburn Orchestra, Port Angeles and Pacific Symphonies, among others, and performed at the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and the Colburn and Seattle Chamber Music Societies. She attended the Aspen Music Festival, Perlman Music Program and Heifetz Chamber Music Seminar and has collaborated on stage with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Jon Kimura Parker, Demarre McGill, Time for Three and Mark O’Connor. Previous teachers and mentors include Clive Greensmith, Robert Lipsett and Tim Simonec. Olivia received BM and MM degrees from the Colburn Conservatory, and is currently pursuing her DMA at USC’s Thornton School studying cello with Ralph Kirshbaum and composition with Dr. Donald Crockett.