Olivier Carillier was born in France in 1994 and began studying the violin in Toulouse at the age of five. From 2012, he studied at the University of Music in Basel, where he obtained his Master’s degree in violin under Raphaël Oleg in 2017 and his Master’s degree in viola under Silvia Simionescu in 2020.
In 2021, he was deputy principal violist of the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra and has been principal violist of the Basel Symphony Orchestra since 2022. He is regularly invited to perform as
principal violist with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. He also performs as a soloist accompanied by orchestras such as
the Collegium Basel and the Orchestre de la Ville de Delémont.
Olivier has won prizes at numerous competitions for solo and chamber music in France, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Switzerland. In 2019, he won first prize in the
competition organised by the “Marianne and Curt Dienemann Foundation” (Lucerne) and was twice a prize-winner of the “Rahn Kulturfonds” (Zurich, 2019 and 2020).
He performs at various festivals, notably the Mizmorim Festival (Basel) from 2019 to 2021 and the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, in which he has been a regular participant since 2022.
He collaborates with renowned artists such as the Gringolts Quartet and the Doric Quartet. In 2019, he was invited by the latter to the Mendelssohn Festival in Mull
(Scotland).