Kevin Oluwole Olusola (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, Candie, 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. He 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)
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.
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