Acclaimed jazz harpist and composer Isabelle Olivier explores Impressionism in music and the visual arts with her genre-melding new album.

Out now in Europe and March 21st, 2025 in the US and Canada via Rewound Echoes, Impressions brings together jazz and classical influences via a remarkably versatile electro-acoustic ensemble.

The French Impressionists revolutionized the art world by privileging the emotional and spiritual perception of the natural world over its literal reproduction. Hailing from France, harpist Isabelle Olivier has always felt an innate affinity for Impressionism and discovered its echoes within her other artistic passions, primarily the parallel worlds of jazz and classical music.

On her vibrant new album, Impressions, Olivier conjures a bold musical landscape from the lush and stirring hues of her diverse influences. Inspired by tenor sax icon John Coltrane’s revered composition “Impressions,” she explores the confluences of jazz and Impressionism with a painter’s instinct for complementary colors, forms and textures.

“I think about Impressionism as a combination between elegance, minimalism, spectral notions, feelings and vibes – things that you can feel but you cannot explain,” Olivier describes. “Looking at Impressionist art is like becoming part of nature, to the point where you forget that you’re human. I love this feeling.”

1. Fleurs de soleil
2. Eclats
3. Pizzicato Life
4. Cézanne
5. Bike
6. An Opening
7. Open a Window
8. At Night
9. The Boating Party
10. Fog on the Lake
11. Forlane
12. Evanescence
13. Wrong Colors
14. Tango
15. La gare
16. Impressions

The young French harpist opens her most wondrously sculpted work of musical art on a sheer vein of decadence that flows within Fleurs de soleil, the gently strident Eclats and the veritably crystalline Pizzicato Life and then we get brought forth an aching yearn within Cézanne, the playful Bike, the glistening An Opening and then we get both a wistful hope within Open a Window and the creatively sculpted At Night.

Along next is the poignantly expressive The Boating Party, the stoically pensive Fog on the Lake and the flourishing Forlane, and they are in turn followed by the smooth as silk nature of Evanescence, the sterner fare of Wrong Colors, the aptly-entitled Tango, the set rounding out on the shaken, not stirred approach to La gare, closing on the sweepingly grandiose fare of the titular Impressions.

Official Spotify Purchase Link

www.isabelleolivier.com