“"Hereness is the first of all sacred things." — OkCello

Okorie "OkCello" Johnson is an American cellist-songwriter whose artistry integrates cello performance, live-sound-looping, improvisation, and storytelling — all culminating in original compositions that collide classical with jazz, EDM, reggae, and funk. His music is inspired by the exploration of African Diasporic melodies and narratives and their intersection with people's perceptions and assumptions about the classical and European nature of the cello. As well, his work with improvisation attempts to embody the phenomenon of wordless prayer.

So far in 2026, OkCello has taken his show to the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska — headlining performing arts centers in Rolla, MO, Eugene, OR, Fairbanks, AK, and Anchorage, AK to enthusiastic full houses. His performance at the Fairbanks Concert Association sold out. He also continues to tour nationally and deliver keynote addresses and performances for organizations such as Morgan Stanley, Intuit, and the LA Unified School District.

2025 was a year of extraordinary range. He headlined the Johns Creek Juneteenth Celebration, performed at the Aspen Institute Business Summit in Aspen, Colorado, completed two concert voyages aboard the Ritz Carlton Ilma superyacht — sailing from Puerto Rico to the Eastern Caribbean in January and from Amsterdam to Copenhagen in July — and headlined the SCADshow in Atlanta. He also performed for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony of Atlanta, delivered keynotes for the LA Unified School District and Red Ventures, and was featured at the Door Kinetic Arts Festival in Door County, Wisconsin. In October 2025, he released his fourth and most personal studio album, Funny How Things Work Out — a bold exploration of trust, faith, and creative freedom that fuses his signature looped cello with new collaborations and daring soundscapes. The album was celebrated in Georgia Entertainment as "his most personal and ambitious album yet."

2024 brought equally remarkable breadth. OkCello performed for Pixar in Oakland, California, completed a national City Winery tour, performed at the Columbus Museum of Art, and headlined the UNC Chapel Hill Process Series. He also delivered the Liminal: An Atlanta Concerto with the Panama City Symphony, completed residencies and research at High Point University, and performed internationally, including in Cartagena, Colombia. He was also featured at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta alongside actor and musician TC Carson.

2023 was a banner year for OkCello. It started with the Cecelia Caines Artist-in-Residence at Paideia School in Atlanta, a month-long series of performances and talks focused on identity and social justice. In February, he collaborated with the Georgia Symphony Orchestra to present the world premiere of Liminal: An Atlanta Concerto, a piece he co-composed with conductor Timothy Verville. In March, he composed an original score for "Belly," a dance piece by New York City company Dishman + Co., which had its world premiere at Dixon Place Theatre. In May, he delivered his talk and performance entitled the "Liberatory Power of Language" for Morehouse College's Candle in the Dark Lecture Series. Also in May, he composed the original score for the film American Voices Against Apartheid, which opened at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, before moving to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The film focused on the role played by the arts community in the struggle against apartheid. His year finished with two national media moments: he was the subject of a short piece Intuit created about negotiating finances as an artist-entrepreneur, and he was interviewed and performed on the Tamron Hall Show in December, explaining how he "flipped the script" on traditional cello playing by using a looper.

In September 2022, Okorie was one of the presenters at the Democratic Republic of the Congo Biennale for his proposal of a sound installation project entitled "Vessel of Breath," a meditative cello composition comprised of harvested sound, collaborative compositions, and community interviews. In March 2022, he participated in the Kennedy Center's artist residency program, Office Hours, where he began workshopping the process for the sound installation. The residency culminated in a performance at the REACH, the Kennedy Center's "living theater where diverse art forms collide to break down boundaries between audience and art."

2021 saw his inclusion in the InStyle February issue, which identified him as a member of the "Creative Class Making Atlanta the New Epicenter of American Arts." He was also identified in Atlanta Magazine's "Atlanta Rising Creative Class that Is Gaining New Recognition on the National Scene." That year, he also scored the Atlanta Journal-Constitution documentary Imperfect Alibi, which won a regional Emmy Award, released his third studio album Beacon in September, and released a holiday album, An Ok Christmas, in December.

In 2020, Okorie was commissioned by Flux Projects to create an improvisational work entitled "Stir Crazy," directly responding to the isolation of the COVID-19 quarantines. He then collaborated with visual artist Fahamu Pecou and poet Jon Goode to create a performance art piece entitled HUE+MEN that, in response to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, asserted through sound, imagery, and poetry the sanctity and power of Black humanity. He was also selected by Emory University to participate in its inaugural Arts and Social Justice Fellowship program, created by the Emory Center for Ethics, in which he and five other Atlanta artists were commissioned to create works in collaboration with Emory professors that spoke to the racial reckoning the US experienced that summer.

In 2019, he had the honor of performing at SXSW for Choose ATL and the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, performing at the Oak Hill Stage of the Atlanta Jazz Festival, opening for Grammy Award-winning artist Van Hunt, being a featured artist at the Story2019 festival at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, opening for Grammy Award-winning recording artist Maxwell at the Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park, and being invited to perform in Havana, Cuba at the classical music festival Habana Classica, which coincided with the 500th birthday of that capital city.

He is a recipient of the Alliance Theatre's 2018 Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab grant and a 2018 Creative Loafing Readers' Choice winner for Best Local Jazz Act. His sophomore album Resolve was named one of ArtsATL's top local albums of 2018. He has also scored a Suzi Bass Award-winning children's theatre production, Head to Toe, for Alliance Theatre's Theater for the Very Young.

Over his career, Okorie has had the opportunity to perform and/or record with India.Arie, De La Soul, and Big Boi of OutKast, amongst many others. He is also the inspiration behind Lil' Okorie and the Magic Cello, a children's picture book celebrating the transformative power of music, drawn from his childhood origin story as a cellist and the impact of his live performances.

Okorie describes his circuitous route to this unusual solo cello career in the following quote: "After years of putting my cello down and picking it back up, after years of deciding that the cello wasn't financially practical, after years of thinking that my other voices were my native ones, I realized that the cello was the oldest, the most central and the most sacred part of me. I resolved never, ever, to deny it again."