Pentatonix

Pentatonix

History
Pentatonix began with Kirstin Maldonado, Mitch Grassi, and Scott Hoying who grew up together and were schoolmates at Martin High School in Arlington, Texas. For a local radio show competition to meet the cast of Glee, they arranged and submitted a trio version of "Telephone," the hit song by Lady Gaga and featuring Beyoncé. Despite losing the competition, their singing sparked attention at their school, and they began performing. Their version of "Telephone" subsequently gained attention on YouTube.

Avi Kaplan's basso profondo vocal range was a prominent element of Pentatonix's sound from the group's founding through his departure in 2017. Hoying and Maldonado both graduated from Martin High School in 2010, Grassi in 2011. Hoying went off to the University of Southern California (USC) to pursue a degree in popular music performance, while Maldonado pursued a degree in musical theatre at the University of Oklahoma. While at USC, Scott Hoying joined an a cappella group called SoCal VoCals. He found out about The Sing-Off from another member of the group, Ben Bram (also their arranger, producer, and sound engineer), and was encouraged to audition for the show. He persuaded Maldonado and Grassi to join him, but Bram suggested having a bass and beatboxer as well to support the group. Through a mutual friend, Hoying met Avi Kaplan (born April 17, 1989), a highly recognized vocal bass in the a cappella community. Then, the trio found Kevin Olusolaon YouTube, where one of his videos in which he was simultaneously beatboxing and playing the cello (called "celloboxing") had gone viral. Olusola was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, and graduated pre-med from Yale University.

The group met the day before the auditions for the third season of The Sing-Off began. The group successfully auditioned for the show and eventually went on to win the title for 2011 (season three).

Pentatonix, as suggested by Scott Hoying, is named after the pentatonic scale, a musical scale or mode with five notes per octave, representing the five members of the group. They replaced the last letter with an "x" to make it more appealing. The quintet derives its influences from pop, dubstep, electro, reggae, hip hop, and classical music.