Alicia Olatuja is a mezzo-soprano and graduate of the Manhattan School of Music. She has made her professional debut as Sacagawea at the Opera Memphis and at Carnegie Hall, UVA, and

The Kennedy Center The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (formally known as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and commonly referred to as the Kennedy Center) is the United States National Cultural Center, located on the Potom ...

. She has sung with the

Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, behi ...

since 2007.

Early Life

Born in Washington State, Olatuja moved to Oregon and then settled in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

with her family when she was 5 years old. Growing up, she started developing her voice in church and found inspiration from Whitney Houston. She was supported by her grandmother, Lucille Mitchell, who was a head elder at their church, as well as her mother Valencia who had a singing voice of her own.Willis, S. (2019, February 5). Alicia Olatuja Has Faith in Her Voice. Retrieved from DownBeat: https://downbeat.com/?/news/detail/alicia-olatuja-faith-in-voice Olatuja remembers traveling across Missouri, namely to Kansas City, for church music retreats. She sang her first solo in church when she was 9 years old and by the time she was in middle school, she was able to read and sing music from prolific composers including Handel and Mozart.

Education

Olatuja originally majored in veterinary medicine before deciding to pursue a music degree at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded in ...

. She graduated with her undergraduate degree from the School of Music, then pursued her masters at the Manhattan School of Music. Her studies in classical voice/opera and being on stage “instantly felt at home” for her.

Career

U.S. 2013 Inauguration Ceremony

On January 21, 2013, Olatuja performed a solo during “Battle Hymn of The Republic” with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. She was given 10 days to prepareHudson, S. (2016, November 17). Jazz singer Alicia Olatuja adjusts to the sudden role in the spotlight. Retrieved from Argus Leader: https://www.argusleader.com/story/blogs/scotthudson/2016/11/17/jazz-singer-alicia-olatuja-adjusts-sudden-role-spotlight/93914974 for an event that approximately one million people attended.CBS News. (2012, January 21). How many attended Obama's second inauguration? Retrieved from CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-many-attended-obamas-second-inauguration/ While she couldn’t recall what she saw more than how the event made her feel, this performance helped gain Olatuja international attention.

Albums

She had released an album ''The Promise'' in the preceding January, as the Olatuja Project, with her Nigerian-born husband Michael Olatuja, himself a successful jazz bassist. Alicia sang some Nigerian lyrics, including in the

Yoruba language Yoruba (, ; Yor. '; Ajami: ) is a language spoken in West Africa, primarily in Southwestern and Central Nigeria. It is spoken by the ethnic Yoruba people. The number of Yoruba speakers is roughly 50 million, plus about 2 million second-languag ...

. Later that year she released "In The Dark" as a single, and the next year included it in her album ''Timeless''. In 2019 she released ''Intuition: Songs from the Minds of Women''.

Other Performances

Alicia performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 2017. She tours extensively, performs vocal arranging as well as singing, and operates the on-line Vocal Breakthrough Academy, an adaptation to the disruption of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. She sings “Pilgrimage” on track 6 of

Dr. Lonnie Smith Lonnie Smith (July 3, 1942 – September 28, 2021), styled Dr. Lonnie Smith, was an American jazz Hammond B3 organist who was a member of the George Benson quartet in the 1960s. He recorded albums with saxophonist Lou Donaldson for Blue Note be ...

's 2021 CD ''Breathe'' (Blue Note Records).

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American mezzo-sopranos University of Missouri alumni University of Missouri School of Music alumni 21st-century American women {{US-opera-singer-stub