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Kevin Oluwole Olusola KO (born October 5, 1988) is the beatboxer of Pentatonix, who also occasionally plays cello in their songs as well. He joined the band to compete in The Sing-Off after Scott Hoying found him through a viral online video of him beatboxing while playing cello.

Bio[]

Kevin grew up in the small town of Owensboro, Kentucky, the son of a Nigerian psychiatrist, Dr. Wally Olusola, and a Grenadian nurse, Curline Olusola. He has a sister, Candace, and a brother, Kellon. At an early age, Kevin began learning piano, cello and saxophone. He performed at Carnegie Hall twice as soloist on the cello and saxophone and has appeared on NPR’s “From The Top." After finishing high school at Phillips Academy Andover, Kevin enrolled in Yale University where he was a pre-med and majored in East Asian Studies. He spent 18 months in Beijing becoming fluent in Chinese as a part of his Yale fellowship. While in college, Kevin began developing his “celloboxing” skills and in 2009 won second place in the “Celebrate and Collaborate with Yo-Yo Ma” international competition. Ma would call Kevin's celloboxing version of "Dona Nobis Pacem" both “inventive and unexpected.” In 2011, Kevin’s “Julie-O” celloboxing YouTube video was featured by CBS, AOL, Huffington Post and Washington Post, among others. Kevin was also named one of 100 “History Makers in the Making” by NBC’s TheGrio and was hand-chosen by Quincy Jones to represent him in concert at the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival alongside Bobby McFerrin and Chick Core'a. " (quotation from the official website)

Personal life[]

He got engaged to his girlfriend Leigh Weissman in October 2018. They were married on September 16, 2019. With help from Orange Blossom Special Events, they hosted two days of weddings with 225 guests at the American-style wedding and 165 at the traditional Nigerian wedding. Their rehearsal dinner doubled as a traditional Nigerian ceremony to pay respect to the groom’s heritage on his father’s side. Kevin's bandmates in the Grammy-winning a cappella group — Mitch Grassi, Scott Hoying, Kirstin Maldonado and Matt Sallee — were all in attendance at the American ceremony.

They welcomed their first child, a daughter, Kaia Noelle, on April 3, 2021.

Pentatonix[]

Kevin joined the group when Scott contacted him after watching Kevin's video "Julie-O" that had gone viral at the time. Just by his luck, Scott simply typed in "beatboxer" in the search bar on YouTube and Julie-O was one of the first examples that showed up.

External Links[]

Twitter: @KOlusola

Instagram: @kolusola

Facebook: @KO1Music

YouTube

Official Website

Gallery[]

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