Reared in Grand Forks,North Dakota, Olmstead studied violin with Burton Kaplan in New York and with Lea Foli at the Aspen Music Festival; she was a member of the New York Youth Symphony and the National Orchestral Association.
She then embarked upon the study of musicology; her instructors included Gustave Reese, George Perle, H. Wiley Hitchcock, Barry S. Brook, James Haar, Brian Fennelly, and Jan LaRue.
[1] Olmstead is especially well-regarded for her work on the music of Roger Sessions and for her history of The Juilliard School.
Other honors have included three awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and she has spent time as a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome and as a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
[2] Olmstead is married to composer Larry Thomas Bell,[3][4] for whom she adapted the play Holy Ghosts by Romulus Linney into an opera libretto; in 2009 she produced its premiere in Boston.