Today we’d like to introduce you to Roella Oloro.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
A Short Bio
“Roella Oloro is a British composer and multi-instrumentalist of Nigerian and Jamaican descent. Her early musical home was in the Pentecostal Church playing piano, bass guitar and singing in regional gospel choirs around South West England. This taught her to play by ear alongside formal training in classical piano, jazz clarinet and alto saxophone. She became inspired by jazz in her early teens after hearing the virtuosic brilliance of Oscar Peterson. At 15, she composed her first ever piece for big band ,”Keep Moving,” which was performed at the Cheltenham Jazz festival by the Gloucestershire Youth Jazz Orchestra (GYJO), in Cheltenham Gloucestershire, UK. At 17, another of her big band compositions ” Cruising,” was debuted by GYJO at the Royal Albert Hall at the finals of the national Music For Youth competition (2015). At 18 years old, her first composition for symphonic orchestra entitled, ” Noah’s Zoo,” was debuted at the Birmingham Symphony Hall at the Semi-Finals of the Music For Youth competition in Birmingham, UK (2016).
She first moved to London in 2017 to study at Trinity Laban and quickly got involved with London’s vibrant scene. Roella has performed at some of London’s renowned jazz clubs and performance venues such as Ronnie Scott’s, Pizza Express Soho and The Southbank Centre as well as UK festivals including Glastonbury, Love Supreme and We Out Here among others. After spending summer 2018 at Berklee College of Music under the mentorship of renowned drummer Terri Lyne-Carrington during the school’s five-week performance programme, she was offered a full scholarship to study there. After a rigorous fundraising campaign that saw many communities come together to help her raise £23,000 in 4 months, Roella was able to take up her place at Berklee in September 2019.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely one of the biggest challenges was navigating the pandemic which hit during my second semester of being at Berklee. I’d only just taken up my place there (which was monumental in itself after the crazy fundraising campaign conducted at home for me) and suddenly I found myself back in the UK. I made the decision to keep studying at Berklee online from the UK instead of deferring because I didn’t want to lose momentum with my studies. It was difficult essentially being in two countries at the same time though. I juggled the 5-hour time difference whilst at times also navigating difficult living conditions at home that sometimes made college-work feel like a refuge. I studied online out of the UK for a year and half. The uncertainty during that time of not knowing whether I’d ever make it back to Boston to study on campus felt like a dark cloud looming over my head; as if I was suspended in limbo. I still made what I could out of the situation. I look back on it now and some of the work that I’m performing regularly now wouldn’t exist if the pandemic hadn’t happened.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Fast forward a few years (from what I shared in the MY story section)
She graduated Magna Cum Laude in May 2023 from Berklee College of Music and recently obtained a Master’s Degree at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute in June 2024. Now as a full-time free-lance musician; so far in 2025, she has performed in London to a sold-out show at the Vortex, California for her trios third consecutive appearance on the Bands at NAMM stages in Anaheim, California, Brooklyn NY at the esteemed Cafe Erzulie and at the acclaimed Grace By Nia in Boston. In May 2024, she went on a mini-tour to Panama with the Berklee Global Jazz Ambassadors led by Danilo Perez, pianistic prodigy, artistic director and founder of the Global Jazz Institute and Panama Jazz Festival.
In 2023, Roella performed with her trio at Capitol Turnaround in Washington, DC as a featured artist of the SHEROCKS showcase. Pianistically, she represented Berklee’s Jazz and Gender Justice Institute at the Reno Jazz Festival, the Detroit Jazz Festival Collegiate competition and headlined with NEA Jazz Master Terri-Lyne Carrington’s band for BAMSfest (Boston Art & Music Festival).
In May 2022, she won the ISJAC prize for Emerging Black Composers; traveling to Austin, Texas to accept the award and perform with their jazz orchestra. In November 2022, Roella booked a London Mini-tour for her trio during the London Jazz Festival. Three of five show dates; the Royal Albert Hall, Ronnie Scott’s and Pizza Express Soho were sold out. The tour coincided with the release of her first EP ,”Sentient Sounds.” On return from her London- mini tour, her original composition” La Voyage de La Rivière,” for Symphonic Wind Orchestra was debuted by the Berklee Symphonic Winds Orchestra with Roella conducting at the Berklee Performance Centre during their Fall 2022 concert, “Colours.”
Whilst at Berklee, Roella received tutelage from exceptional professors such as NEA Jazz Masters Terri Lyne-Carrington, Joanne Brackeen and Grammy nominated saxophonist Tia Fuller. In Spring 2022, she studied with Esperanza Spalding at Harvard as part of Spalding’s Black Improvisational Music and Dance class. One of her most notable Berklee opportunities, was performing with Berklee’s Jazz and Gender Justice Institute on WGBH’s “Basic Black” TV show in Fall 2019.”
In Summer 2019, through the aid of the Tomorrow’s Warriors organisation based in London, she crowd-fundraised £23,000 to transfer from London’s Trinity Laban conservatoire to start studying at Berklee, USA. That summer, she also performed with Tomorrow’s Warriors’ founder Gary Crosby at Buckingham palace for his OBE award from the Queen of England.
Over the course of the pandemic, she was a BBC Young Musician 2020 Semi-finalist, a Jazz South UK grant recipient, appeared on Decca Records’, “Alone Together” Jazz piano album, on British TV as part of “Jazz 625, the British Jazz Explosion” and released her first single entitled “Sacrificial Lamb”.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Favourite apps – Drum Genius (very useful for practicing jazz improvisation without a band. Much better than a metronome it gives you a variety of drum styles to play along to)
one of my favourite books- The bible, I do actually read it every day, my relationship with Christ is my secret sauce to life
Crunchyroll – the pandemic saw me become an anime fan!! I have the crunchy roll app on both my phones and its the first app I download on any smart/roku TV
Linguee- It’s my favourite app for language learning ( I speak French and German) it gives you the meaning of a word and also that word used in a sentence so you get a better idea of the context that you would use it in. (more accurate than google translate lol)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://roellaoloro.wixsite.com/introducing-roella-o
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roellaoloromusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/roella.oloro
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roella-oloro-9995a51a5/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rella_xo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@roellaoloro2680
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/roella-oloro/noahs-zoo
Image Credits
Jack Kendon (New Generation Jazz)
Monika. S. Jakubowska Photography
Berklee Global Jazz Institute/ Panama Jazz Festival
