The Story

Julie O’Hara is a jazz vocalist, composer and educator from Melbourne who has been contributing to the music scene for over thirty years. Julie’s musical projects have vocal improvisation as an essential element to her arranging, with O’Hara using her voice as a section player, soloist and lyricist. With a fascination for improvising and scat singing, Julie was drawn to writing vocalese lyrics to solos by the jazz masters, particularly horn players from the 40’s and 50’s and continues to write vocalese today.

Award winning songwriter, Julie composes across many genres having spent years freelancing in various musical scenes in Australia, including, Big bands, R&B swing/jump blues, New Orleans trad jazz, contemporary jazz, gypsy swing, Bluegrass, Brazilian, electro-house & hip hop. O’Hara’s current original music projects include ‘La Grande Soiree’, (jazz manouche), ‘Unobtainium’ (contemporary jazz/vocalese) and Sound dome (EDM/Cont.Pop). Past collaborators include George Washingmachine, Bob Sedergreen, The Cat Empire, Paul Williamson’s Hammond Combo, The Hoodangers, Virus, Bluedrag, Brazjaz, Bopkick, The Pearly Shells and B#Big Band.

She spent many years in Europe, Asia and Australia, performing at jazz and music festivals and living in Bangkok and Germany. These days Julie freelances with various groups, including The Pearly Shells, Jake Mason Trio, Paul Williamson, Bob Sedergreen Trio, ‘Ultrafox’ and her own projects. Julie works regularly as a session singer, specialising in vocal improvisation, harmony and scat singing. Julie can be heard as featured vocalist on all series of ABC’s ‘Please Like Me’, and Josh Thomas’s second series ‘Everything is going to be OK’ (Stan) and in feature films like ‘Book of Revelation’, ‘Cloudstreet’ and ‘The Sapphires’.

Rating

Exempt

Cast

Julie O'Hara

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