Meet Michael Oliva | Composer & Recording Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Oliva and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
No risk, no reward. This is something I truly believe. There is no creative field without risk, and while risking things doesn’t guarantee success, doing nothing or never taking chances absolutely guarantees failure.

I put everything into my craft/career. All of my finances, physicality, and soul are poured into my art – without compromise – and I couldn’t see it working any other way. Perhaps that’s a lack of overall life creativity/insight and perhaps there are other routes, but in my opinion I’m one track minded and would not feel fulfilled if I was playing it safe or not living a creative life.

Also, risks are fun. You only live once.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
For over 20 years I’ve been writing and performing music, about 25 to be exact. For the past 18 years I’ve been writing and performing with my band The Harlequins. For the past 10 I’ve been recording and engineering music, and for the past 4 I’ve been composing music for film and media.

I’m very proud of the fact that we’ve grown so much and held the band together for so many years, reassessing goals and the meaning of success along the way.

It’s never been easy however, a long road of a long creative career is filled with disappointment and heartbreak. It’s always been an uphill battle, and we’ve had to fight and constantly reinvent ourselves and prove ourselves and stay sharp as performers and writers.

It can very much feel like a hamster wheel. You have to love everything about it.

When lockdown happened in 2020, I had a lot of time off and there was a very real fear that we may never perform again. I didn’t want to play guitar. I got a midi keyboard for fun to take my mind off of those facts, and then started accidentally falling in love with composing from a keyboard and quickly discovered the realm of media composing and film scoring and realized this is my path forward.

After many years of touring the country being on stage, it’s been very rewarding and fulfilling to be behind a curtain composing music for films. The process is very relaxing to me, it’s a lot of work, but fulfilling work and creatively it’s very satisfying to branch out into other genres where the music is contracted almost like an architect would be contracted…it has nothing to do with YOU personally, but rather it has everything to do with what is on the screen in front of you – you are helping to achieve someone else’s vision and help add your perspective to that.

I’ve learned that you should always stay curious, eager to learn, positive and never stop the hard work. Be grateful for any opportunity to work in a creative field.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would try to cover a lot of ground with some obvious and not so obvious choices.

I like to walk around the city. It’s a great way to really see Cincinnati. I’d show them OTR, the Banks by the River (smale park), Covington, Northside and visit a handful of our beautiful parks.

For Food:

Breakfast/Coffee –
– Allez Cafe
– Mom & Em
– Sugar n Spice in OTR
– Blue Jay in Northside
– 1215 Coffee & Wine
– Deeper Roots
– Collective Espresso

Daytime/Non Establishment:

-Washington Park OTR
-Spring Grove Cemetery
-Cincinnati Zoo

Dinner –

– Kruegers Tavern, Abigail Street, and Pho Lang Tang in OTR

– Indian food I’d say Grace of India in Cheviot & Bridges Nepali in Northside

For Drinks/Nightlife:

-MOTR Pub in OTR, great live music staple, great atmosphere, reasonable drink/food prices

-Longfellow in OTR, great bartenders and drink selection. Particularly the Painkiller cocktail

-Binskis in Camp Washington, great old school bar feel with a huge outside area and any bar that has darts that isn’t a bro bar is a plus for me

– Woodward Theater

– Northside Tavern

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’ve always been influenced by people that took risks and took their career into their own hands. A true DIY lifestyle.

A particular band that inspired me starting out was Gringo Star from Atlanta, GA. They had been hitting the pavement for years and going all in on their dream.

I’ve also been heavily inspired (how could you not) by the work ethic of The Beatles, while they were a once in a generation situation, they really embodied hard work in their craft of songwriting, performing live, and being interesting and funny as well. On the pulse of innovation, by proximity, but also by curiosity.

So I’ve tried to stay active, and curious as a musician for many years as a result.

Besides that, to be quite frank, I’ve found the music industry quite competitive and gatekeeping and any morsel of growth was due to just pure grit, staying persistent and performing to the best of me and my bands ability while trying to stay humble, grounded and fair. Not continuing the trend of gatekeeping.

So I’d like to shout out to me and my band members in The Harlequins, Alex Stenard and Robert Stamler, for always choosing musical excellence and putting the craft above hubris.

Website: https://www.michaeloliva.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baronvonheadless/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-oliva-b69a36212

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHarlequinsMusic/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/theharlequinsmusic