Fred Onovwerosuoke

Who is Fred Onovwerosuoke?

Fred Onovwerosuoke is an American composer born in Ghana of Nigerian parents. He is a multiple winner of the ASCAP Award, among other awards such as the America Music Center Award, Brannen-Cooper Fund Award, and the Minnesota Orchestra Honorable Mention. “FredO,” as he is called by friends and colleagues was born in Secondi-Takoradi, near the Atlantic Coast in Ghana, West Africa. Early childhood and education through college years were spent in both Ghana and Nigeria. In 1990, he attended Principia College, Elsah, Illinois, on a full scholarship, and while there studied music theory and 20th Century composition techniques under Jim Dowcett, as well as Engineering Science and Computer programming with David Cornell and Tom Fuller. Although Onovwerosuoke has had a wide-ranging training that spans composition, electrical and electronic engineering, information technology, management and musicology, he is known to attribute his interest in music to his childhood as boy-soprano and to his high-school music teacher, Sam Anyanele, who instilled him a deep love of indigenous African music. His tutelage under Dowcett at Principia was said to unleash a creative individualism that eventually evolved into a career as a composer with works that bear influences from Africa, the Caribbean and the American Deep South.