An artist whose work DownBeat Magazine calls “a profound work of art,” O’Leary has emerged as one of the most compelling and multidimensional figures in contemporary jazz. Jazz Times notes that “O’Leary illuminates his path and perspectives with remarkable clarity,” observing that his music “recognizes and closes the gap separating the personal from the universal.”
Born in Mérida, Yucatán, México, and raised in Cholula and Mérida, O’Leary began piano studies at age three under the guidance of his mother — a classically trained pianist who pursued music only after completing medical school. At twelve, he and his mother left everything behind — a culture, a language, a family, a life — and started over in Florida with nothing but a suitcase and a dream.
At the heart of O’Leary’s artistry is the belief that music is the most honest language available to us — capable of holding contradiction, duality, and the full spectrum of human experience. His compositions occupy the emotional space of the immigrant and the outsider: deeply rooted yet free of preconception, full of longing and belonging in equal measure. That philosophy found its most powerful expression in his critically acclaimed debut for Arbors Records, The Sundering — a landmark album exploring fractured identity, resilience, and the courage to claim one’s own story. Featuring collaborations with the late Shaun Martin, ten-time GRAMMY Award winner and Snarky Puppy pianist, and NEA Jazz Master Dick Hyman, the album draws on O’Leary’s personal reckoning with his bicultural heritage, the immigrant experience, and the neuroscience of memory itself. As DownBeat critic Michael J. West observed, absorbing O’Leary’s story elevates The Sundering from a collection of piano music into something far greater — “a profound work of art.”
O’Leary’s academic achievements are as extraordinary as his artistry. He holds a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of South Florida College of Medicine, where his research on neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and depression was recognized among the top 2% of all published articles in the biological and medical sciences. He is the recipient of the Ruth L. Kirschstein F31 Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke. For O’Leary, science and music are not separate pursuits — they are two expressions of the same deep curiosity about what it means to be human.
As a performer, O’Leary has performed and recorded with some of the most celebrated voices in jazz, including Randy Brecker, Dick Hyman, Houston Person, Melissa Aldana, Camila Meza, Wycliffe Gordon, Marty Morell, Jason Marsalis, Shai Maestro, Charles McPherson, Russell Malone, Ken Peplowski, Diego Figueiredo, Shaun Martin, and The Florida Orchestra, among many others. He has recorded extensively as a solo artist, sideman, and as pianist for the acclaimed jazz ensemble La Lucha.
John C. O’Leary III is a proud Yamaha Performing Artist — a natural alignment between an instrument of world-class expressive power and an artist whose music demands nothing less.