BIO

A versatile violinist, Olga Smola plays solo and ensemble performances in many different styles of music including classical, jazz, rock, country and electronic music as a violin DJ.

Music has taken Smola around the world. Her solo touring credits include concerts in Monaco, Spain, Belgium, Croatia, France, England, Azerbaijan, the United States, and throughout the Russian Federation.

Olga Smola was born in Krasnoyarsk, Russia and took her first violin lessons at the age of six. She graduated with honor from the Moscow State Conservatory in 2004, where she studied with professors Alexandr Melnikov and Maya Glezarova. Smola also finished her D.M.A. at the Moscow Conservatory in 2013.

Smola was co-founder and member of “Alliance Trio” in 2004-2015. The trio won the Gold Medal and the Prize for Best Performance of a Contemporary Work at the 2nd Taneev’s International Chamber music competition (2005). In addition, Smola was awarded the first place at the 5th International Muse World Competition (2011).  Smola was a member of ARYO (American-Russian Youth Orchestra) and the AMIRUS chamber ensemble. 

She has participated in numerous master classes and festivals in Russia and Europe, such as: USA-Portugal International Music Festival, 140 years Jubilee of the Moscow Conservatory, Moscow Summer Jazz Festival, Irina Arkhipova Festival and others.

Smola has earned grant funding from the Irina Arkhipova Foundation, the Fund for Russian Art in Music Performance, the Bistrizkaya Fund, and the Russian Federation’s Culture Fund. 

Since August 2016, Smola has served as a professor of music at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO).  In 2017 she performed as a soloist with the Omaha Symphony and in 2018 as a guest violinist for Billy McGuigan’s «Rock Twist» show.

In 2019 Olga Smola found herself in a new role as a music director, an actress and a violinist for the Blue Barn theater production «Indecent».

  For the production of a Russian Fairy Tale «Morozko» for the Ollie Webb’s center in Omaha she served as a music director, Russian culture consultant, composer, arranger and violinist.

Olga Smola plays a Timofei Filippovitch Podgorny violin ca. 1932.