Born and raised in Moscow, Russia, Olga Konkova now makes her home in Oslo, Norway, where she works as an acoustic post-bop pianist and composer. Her playing draws on a range of sources that includes Herbie Hancock, John Lewis, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, and Keith Jarrett. Favoring a clean and crystalline approach to the instrument, she also invites comparison with Ahmad Jamal and the underappreciated Walter Norris. Like Norris, she is recognized for the freedom she takes with well-known melodies; rather than reserving improvisation for after the initial statement of a theme or head, she begins reshaping material the moment her hands reach the keys, allowing even familiar standards to emerge renewed.
Konkova began formal piano study at age seven. Although she later trained at the Russian Academy of Music and earned her diploma there in 1993, her early focus remained classical rather than jazz. Shortly afterward she relocated to Boston for two semesters of jazz instruction at Berklee College of Music. In the middle of the decade she left the United States for Oslo, where she married Norwegian bassist Per Mathisen, sibling of saxophonist Ole Mathisen. Her first recording as a leader appeared in 1996: the trio session Going with the Flow, which featured bassist Carl Morten Iversen and drummer Audun Kleive. Several well-received albums for the British Candid imprint followed, among them 1997’s Her Point of View and 2001’s Some Things from Home.
A duo project with her husband, Unbound, came out in 2006. Three years later she issued Improvisational: Four, a collection of solo-piano interpretations sparked by the music of Joni Mitchell. She next joined the roster of Norway’s Losen Records and released the expansive solo recital Return Journey in 2011. A collaboration with vocalist Wenche Losnegård produced the lyrical My Voice: Music for Piano, Vocal & Percussion. In 2015 she returned to the trio format for The Goldilocks Zone, again with Mathisen and now with drummer Gary Husband. Two projects with guitarist Jens Thoresen came next: the atmospheric holiday recording December Songs in 2017 and the inventive standards collection Old Songs the following year.
