B i o g r a p h y
Ayọ̀ Olúrántí (formerly Ogúnrántí) has featured in the music scenes in Nigeria, UK & USA primarily as a composer and as well as a conductor, organist and music theorist. While his compositions have been performed from the Orient to the Occident, he has given recitals on historic and celebrity organs in different parts of the world. Olúrántí has composed well over 200 sacred works and arrangements for Christendom and has also successfully designed and directed sacred music programs (liturgical & contemporary worship). He was previously the Composer-In-Residence and Associate Organist at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, where he also conducted the Pittsburgh Festival Orchestra. Ayọ̀ is a member of Bafrik, Brazil and a founding composer-member of Alia Musica, Pittsburgh. Currently an Online Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Music Department, Mountain Top University (Nigeria), Olúrántí was previously the Chair of this same Department and the Sub-Dean of the Humanities College. A former post-doctoral research and teaching fellow at Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa, he was also in residence as a fellow at Goethe-Institut (Germany) on the Postcolonial Recherche project.
Ayọ̀ Olúrántí is a 2024 recipient of the prestigious Harvard University's Fromm Music Foundation commission and project grant. His Hẹlẹlẹ was premiered at the 2024 World Choir Games in Auckland, New Zealand by the gold-winning Mountain Top Chorale (Nigeria). To celebrate 100 years of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), Ayọ̀ was commissioned to write the piece, MandEʋe, for Vertice Sonora. It was performed in a 2023 program of world premieres by European and African composers under the artistic direction of Lukas Ligeti in Spain and South Africa. Olúrántí was also commissioned in 2022 by Ensemble Recherche (Freiburg, Germany) to compose the piece, Iná Ràn, under the aegis of Goethe-Institut (Manheim, Germany). His opera, Ọmọ Àgbẹ̀, was premiered by the James Madison University Opera Theatre in 2022. Ayọ̀ won the 2019 Morehouse College Sub-Sahara Africa Commission Award (USA).
Ayọ̀ graduated from the University of Southampton, UK with first-class honours (summa cum laude) in Music Composition & Organ Performance and holds an MA and a PhD in Composition & Theory from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He had the extraordinary privilege to study music with distinguished scholars and performers: Sarah Baldock (organ at Winchester Cathedral), William Drabkin (advanced counterpoint & fugue), Michael Finnissy (composition), Michael Zev Gordon (composition), David Owen Norris (organ) and Peter White (conducting) in the UK; Akin Eúbà (African music), Don Franklin (Bach studies), Eric Moe (composition), Mathew Rosenblum (composition), Amy Williams (composition), Marcos Balter (composition) and Roger Zahab (composition & orchestration) in the USA.
Ayọ̀ studied and recorded dùndún music - a Yorùbá instrumental genre. He applies the theoretical principles and instrumentation of dùndún music in his scholarly compositions. On a broader facet, Ayọ̀, who believes in both the traditional and the contemporary ‘experimental’ approaches to music within a postmodernist aesthetic, deploys an intercultural approach in his acoustic and electroacoustic compositional language.
Olúrántí has also won several other awards and scholarships: Andrew Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowship (USA), St. Michael’s Organ scholarship (UK), Tafawa Balewa Scholarship (UK), Heather Award (for best interpretation of Bach’s keyboard work – Southampton), Michael James Music Trust Award (UK), Sidney Perry Award (UK), Brereton Memorial Fund grants (UK) etc. He was the winner of the 2009 Donald Sutherland Endowment Fund Composition Competition (USA). The gold-winning Mountain Top Chorale premiered Ayo's Ràbàtà-Rabata at the 2018 Interkultur World Choir Games.
With a background in the fields of Industrial & Production Engineering as well as Computer Hardware Technology, Olúrántí is active in the world of church digital and virtual pipe organ research, design and production.