Boyé's mother and father are Nigerian. While pregnant, Boyé's mother went to London while his father remained in Nigeria. He was born in England and returned to Nigeria to live with his father for the first few years of his life. His mother remarried and worked for the London Underground, cleaning tracks at night. Boyé was raised in the Tottenham Court neighborhood. He spent much of his youth in foster homes with Caucasian parents.
As a teenager, he listened to the music of Motown, including Stevie Wonder and Kool and the Gang, and other artists like James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Jackie Wilson and Otis Redding. Boyé was working in a McDonalds in London when he was 16 when he was introduced to the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by a manager. He was baptized without his mother's knowledge, soon afterward.
Boyé met his wife Julie in an LDS singles ward and they were married in the Salt Lake Temple. She is his business manager. They have two children, Adanna and Zander.
In 2009, Boye began raising money to buy a house for a local refugee family with sales of his single, "Crazy for You."
On February 22, 2012, Boyé became a United States citizen in a ceremony at Rose Wagner Theater in Salt Lake City. Boyé was surprised when he was invited by the judge conducting the citizenship ceremony to sing the national anthem at the ceremony.
1970
London, England
Bristol England
Alex Boyé first performed in public while serving a mission for the Church in Bristol, England. After completing his mission, in 1995 he formed and became the lead signer of European Boy band "Awesome". They performed at local dances and other small venues until 1996 when they won a vocal competition on Capitol Radio, London’s largest radio station. Universal Records of Europe signed Awesome to a five-album recording contract. Awesome released three singles off their first album, Rumors, which made top-10 charts all across Europe. The band sold 500,000 CDs and performed alongside groups including Bryan Adams, George Michael, Simon and Garfunkel, MC Hammer, and many others.
But Boyé disliked the lifestyle of a touring musician. "I had this dream of being a musician, but it was taking me down a road that led somewhere I didn't want to go," he said.[1] Boyé decided to leave the band in 1999 to pursue a solo career. He lost all of the material possessions he had gained as a member of Awesome when the record company took the apartment, the clothes, the phone and the money.
In 2000, Alex moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, to pursue a career in faith-centered music. When the lead actor portraying Frederick Douglass in Rodgers Memorial Theatre's production of Frank Wildhorn's Civil War dropped out three weeks before the play opened, Boyé was recruited as a replacement. With no prior acting experience and no knowledge of the Civil War, he learned his lines and united the cast. Glenn McKay, the theater's board president, had recruited black performers for the show from the Calvary Baptist choir and other area churches, but was having trouble melding them with his Davis County regulars. McKay said Boyé "saved the production."
Boyé followed that success with the role of Aminadab in Lightstone Films' production of David and Goliath. In 2005 Boyé received an award from the LDS Booksellers Association for his album "Testimony". Boyé was seeking a way to build an LDS audience when he met Craig Jessop, then conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, at an LDS music festival and he encouraged Boyé to audition for the choir. Boyé joined the 360-voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir in 2006 at the urging of its then-director, Craig Jessop, and when accepted became one of three black choir members.
He also continues to pursue a solo career. He had two solo parts in the choir's album, Come Thou Fount. Boyé was also signed to Deseret Books' Shadow Mountain Label. In August 2010 he participated as a featured soloist in a concert connected with the rededication of the Catholic church in St. George, Utah.
In August, 2011, Boyé was invited to take part in Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Courage” rally in Jerusalem. Boyé was given a minor non-singing part, but at the last minute Beck asked him to sing to a group of individuals who had helped put on the rally. Beck was so impressed by Boyé that he rearranged the next evening's program so that Boyé could close the rally.
Songs by Boyé have appeared in movie soundtracks including Charly (2002), The Dance, Baptists at Our Barbecue and Church Ball. On 9 January 2012, Boyé was featured in a video by The Piano Guys released as Peponi, a cover of Coldplay's Paradise on YouTube.