Olga Piccolo graduated from the St Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov Music College and the Petrozavodsk Branch of the St Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire (Musicology). She went on to study at the Public Speaking School of the St Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy. Piccolo then worked as a music theory teacher and concert mistress at various music schools in St Petersburg. In 1993, she started working as an MC at concerts for children at the Petrozavodsk Philharmonic Hall. Since 1999, Piccolo has been General and Artistic Director of the St Petersburg Piccolo Children's Music Lecture Hall.
Olga Piccolo is a member of the Association of Music Psychologists and Psychotherapists and the International Sound Therapy Association. She has taken part in music therapy conferences and workshops on sound therapy. Piccolo has also written articles about music therapy and its effects on children. She is the author of the book of poetry My Spirals. Since 2012, the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg and its branches in Vladivostok and Vladikavkaz have been the main venues for Olga Piccolo. She has also toured in Finland and Latvia.
Olga Piccolo is the Director of the St Petersburg Piccolo Private School and the International Piccolo Family Music Camp for Children.
Olga Piccolo’s project Piccolo at the Mariinsky, her series Music Told in Tales of Sand (with sand animation) and Valery Gergiev for Children are very popular and have won the hearts of children and their parents. The Piccolo Lecture Hall collaborates with many world-renowned musicians. Interactive fairytale-like lessons of the lecture hall are tailored to children and teenagers (from three to 15 years of age). Concerts and performances with sand animation are based on Olga Piccolo’s unique techniques, which were developed using the principles of Janusz Korczak, Carl Orff, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and Maria Montessori. Classical music excerpts are woven into the fabric of classic fairytales as well as the author’s own fairytales. The main purpose of the Piccolo Lecture Hall is to open up the world of music culture for children, as well as to develop children’s own creative and artistic talents.
More detailed information is available at the site: http://piccolosolo.ru
