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Okorie “OkCELLO” Johnson

“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.

2023 was a banner year for OkCello.  It started out with the Cecelia Caines Artist-in-Residence at Paideia School in Atlanta, a month-long series of performances and talks that focused on identity and social justice.  In February, he collaborated with the Georgia Symphony Orchestra to present the world premier of Liminal: and Atlanta Concerto, a piece he co-composed with the conductor of the Georgia Symphony Orchestra Timothy Verville.  In March he composed an original score for “Belly, a dance piece performed by New York City company Dishman + Co. Choreography and choreographed by the Artistic Director, Elizabeth Dishman, which had its world premiere in New York city at Dixon Place Theatre. In May, he delivered his talk and cello performance entitled the “Liberatory Power of Language” for the education department at Morehouse College for their Candle in the Dark Lecture Series.  Also in May he was able to compose an 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.” And his year finished with two national media moments.  He was the subject of a short piece Intuit did on him about negotiating finances as an artist-entrepreneur, and he was interviewed and had an opportunity to perform on the Tamron Hall Show in December, in which he explained how he “flipped the script” on traditional cello playing by using a looper.

In September 2022, Okorie OkCello Johnson 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 residence program entitled Office Hours, in which he began workshopping the process for the above sound installation. The Kennedy center 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.”  Finally, a documentary he scored for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Imperfect Alibi” won a regional Emmy, he released his third studio project Beacon in September of 2021, and in December, he released a holiday album entitled, An OkChristmas.

In 2020 Okorie was commissioned by Flux Projects to create improvisational work entitled “Stir Crazy” directly responding to the isolation that stemmed from the COVID19 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 also went on to be selected by Emory University to participate in its inaugural Arts and Social Justice Fellowship program, created by the Emory Center for Ethics. In that program, he and 5 other Atlanta artists were commissioned to create in collaboration with Emory professors and their classes pieces of art that spoke to the racial reckoning that 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 on 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. 

Furthermore, 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. 

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.” 

Photo by Michael R. Reese