Ahamefule J. Oluo dazzles at Transform 25 – Review

Transform25. Ahamefule J Oluo, The Things Around Us. Photo Credit: JMA photography.

On a crisp October evening, the Howard Assembly Room hosted ‘The Things Around Us’, the latest work from acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, composer, writer, and comedian Ahamefule J. Oluo. Blending music, performance, and stand-up comedy, Oluo’s solo show transformed the iconic Leeds venue into an intimate space of laughter, reflection, and hauntingly beautiful sound. Presented as part of Transform 25, this was a rare opportunity to witness an artist at the height of their creative powers, crafting meaning from the everyday objects and stories that surround us.

Opening the evening, Mancunian musician Ellen Beth Abdi delivered an enchanting set that felt both intimate and quietly radical. Using live loops, undulating synths, and subversive lyrics, she performed songs from her new album ‘Who This World Is Made For’. Exploring Manchester street songs, Englishness, and misogyny with understated power, each track was built live, layer upon layer, creating a textured and soothing soundscape that drew the audience into her world. It was a perfect prelude to the main act: personal stories and sonic experimentation woven seamlessly together.

Part stand-up comedy, part jazz improvisation, ‘The Things Around Us’ is the third in Oluo’s trilogy of acclaimed performance works. Where the previous two were autobiographical and ensemble-based, this final piece turns outward: stories about other people, other places, and other times unfold against a backdrop of live, looped soundscapes made from trumpet, clarinet, and unexpected everyday objects like boxes and wind chimes.

Transform25. Ahamefule J Oluo, The Things Around Us. Photo Credit: JMA photography.

The result is extraordinary — funny, strange, and profoundly human. Oluo began with an ironically self-aware anecdote: falling asleep during a friend’s theatre show and wondering if they could make a performance “better than a nap.” What followed was, indeed, a kind of waking dream. Music so immersive and transformative that it lifted the audience out of the daily stress of global anxiety, leaving us so calm and weightless that drifting off didn’t seem far-fetched.

Between those waves of soothing live sound came darkly comic and deeply reflective stories that snapped the room back into sharp focus: the bliss of clearing a blocked nose during childhood illness; celebrating a 30th birthday by replacing a Swedish band’s beloved trumpeter who had died the night before; musings on how Saturn’s ephemeral rings have only existed for a tiny fraction of the planet’s lifetime; the improbable, near-mystical recovery of Oluo’s friend John Keister after years of illness.

On paper, these stories seem disconnected. In performance, they form a constellation – small human moments orbiting vast philosophical questions. Oluo invites us to consider how perspectives shift: how individual lives, planetary time, and chance encounters all intersect in ways that defy logic yet feel utterly true.

Transform25. Ahamefule J Oluo, The Things Around Us. Photo Credit: JMA photography.

By the closing piece, the room felt quietly transformed. Everyone seemed bound together in a shared, yet singular, experience. As Oluo returned to a recurring question — is life something or nothing, or perhaps a bit of both? — the answer hung tenderly in the air, unresolved but deeply felt, as they bowed to a standing ovation. 

Leaving the venue, I overheard someone say simply: “I just feel so happy now.” That captured it perfectly. For ninety minutes, the chaos of the world fell away. The performance reminded us that while darkness is unavoidable, there’s beauty and humour amongst it all: in laughter, in connection, in the fleeting wonder of being here at all.

‘The Things Around Us’ lingers long after the final note fades. It’s a work about perspective — about noticing the tiny details that make up our daily lives, and how those fragments of sound, story, and chance can transform into something quietly profound. Oluo invites us to slow down and listen differently to the world around us, to the absurdities that shape us, and to the fragile threads of joy that hold it all together.

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You can keep up to date with Ahamefule J. Oluo via their website and Instagram, and listen to ‘The Things Around Us’ on Spotify. 

Follow Ellen Beth Abdi on her website and Instagram, and find her new album ‘Who This World Is Made For’ available now.