Kelli S. Hewett
Jon Michael Ogletree
At 3’8”, Jon Michael Ogletree is known as the world’s smallest professional piano player.
At 3 feet 8 inches tall, Jon Michael Ogletree of Hoover is accustomed to being noticed. As a certified public accountant, a CFO and the world’s smallest professional piano player, he has built a life where numbers and music intersect with a message of faith.
Ogletree, who lives in the Kirkman Preserve community off Caldwell Mill Road, balances a high-level corporate finance career with an international reputation as a concert pianist. He has traveled to more than 30 countries — most of them for work as a musician and often as a cruise ship entertainer for the luxury cruise line Explora Journeys.
“I’m not a little person who just happens to be good at the piano,” said Ogletree, 41. “I am a skilled pianist who just happens to be a little person. I don’t feel 3 foot 8 inches.”
He became known as the world’s smallest professional piano player after seeking out the Guinness Book of World Records to find out if he was a potential title holder. While another title holder who is no longer alive holds the official record in their specific Guinness category, it was determined that Ogletree is the smallest living professional pianist.
Height is only part of Ogletree’s story. He doesn’t hear music the way most people do.
He sees it.
Kelli S. Hewett
Jon Michael Ogletree
Ogletree, also a CPA, plays in an improvisational style without reading music. He never plays a song the same way twice.
A rare form of synesthesia allows him to experience music as numbers — the same language that guides his work as a CPA and chief financial officer for a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama subsidiary.
“I see piano notes and numbers associated with those notes, or it’s a numerical sequence that would not make any sense outside of a piano,” he said. “It’s kind of like my own translation of a song.”
Ogletree is incapable of playing any song exactly the same way twice. He likens it to a form of jazz improvisation.
“The physical way that I play the piano stylistically I’ve never seen replicated,” he said. “It’s not something anybody taught me. It’s something I’ve developed over the years because physically, I have to make adaptations for everything. It’s almost like I’m playing a completely different instrument than a regular piano.”
Behind the keys, Ogletree offers an experience that’s creatively captivating with an artistic, emotional athleticism that defies thorough description. The result is an emotional fluency that flows through music rather than words.
His performances also include segments in which he takes a list of audience requests, then seamlessly blends them into a medley that sometimes surprises even himself as it emerges through his fingertips.
“From just a few notes, you can tell it’s Jon Michael because of his touch and stylistic choices,” said Drew Kearney, worship pastor at Mountain Brook Community Church, where Ogletree is also a pianist. “His style is as unique as his fingerprint, but at the same time there is a warmth to it that draws you in immediately.”
Living as a little person has required constant adaptation, including at the piano. Ogletree uses a pedal extension, first built for him in the mid-1990s. He also supplements his reach by crossing his leg to steady himself as he reaches each end of the keys, and he relies on hand-eye coordination he’s developed over decades.
In his personal life, Ogletree drives an adapted car and sometimes uses a scooter to get around. His house includes minimal modifications. He splits household duties with his roommates, who are also longtime friends. When he travels for work or pleasure, he usually goes with friends or enlists a relative as a travel partner.
Adaptations have never been a source of bitterness for Ogletree. He sees his visibility not as a burden but as an opening.
“I am created differently for a purpose,” he said. “That purpose is to glorify God.”
Photo courtesy of Jon Michael Ogletree.
Jon Michael Ogletree
Ogletree regularly performs on Explora Journeys cruises all over the world, including this voyage to Italy.
His belief shapes how he approaches performance. He has never avoided a venue or an audience. Instead, he sees music as a way to meet people where they are.
“I’m all for going out into the world and using music as ministry,” said Ogletree, a graduate of Briarwood Christian School and Samford University, where he is an adjunct professor in personal finance. “People who want to find out about me will then go on my YouTube channel and find out about Jesus.”
Before Ogletree could even walk, music seemed to be a force within him.
“What I’ve been told is, again, I could not even walk at the age of 3, but I would find my way into the room that had our piano,” Ogletree said. “I could reach, but I couldn’t see the keys.”
One day, his brother lifted him onto the piano bench.
“I just sat there and figured it out, I suppose — trial and error,” Ogletree said. “By the end, I was playing chords.”
Ogletree booked his first wedding at age 7, earning $100 to play “Jesus Loves Me” for a friend of the family at Riverchase Baptist Church. By 18, he was playing professionally at an Italian restaurant in Vestavia Hills.
While he took piano lessons as a youngster and learned to read music, his gift flourished most when he was freed from the constraints of conventional piano playing. Now, when he’s not managing a team of 20 as a CFO or teaching personal finance classes, he travels for concerts, performances and public speaking.
Because Ogletree’s perception of music as numbers and segments never fully turns off, ironically he doesn’t listen to music for relaxation or enjoyment. But when he sits at the piano, all the “noise” of the numbers fades.
“By the time I’m playing it, that synesthesia gift has done its part,” he said. “I’m releasing what I know how to play. I’m just grateful that what comes out is something people enjoy because it would have to come out.”
Musically, Ogletree gravitates toward challenge. One of his favorite artists is Stevie Wonder because of the musical complexity of Wonder’s compositions, especially the 1985 hit “Overjoyed.”
“Everything from rhythms, chord progressions, notes that shouldn’t fit together that somehow do when [Wonder] plays,” Ogletree said. “He has such a mature understanding of music that most people don’t.”
Ogletree’s favorite song to play is Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” which reflects some of Ogletree’s personal journey. Among his most popular performances on Spotify and the livestreaming platform Twitch is “Georgia on My Mind,” a 1930 song made famous by Ray Charles in 1960.
For Ogletree, music, faith and purpose are inseparable. The same mind that translates melodies into numbers and patterns also guides his work in boardrooms and music venues. At the piano, that intention becomes visible — not as notes on a page but as numbers, patterns and a lifetime of meaning released one song at a time.
“What strikes me most about his playing is I can hear his story through the music that he composes,” Kearney said. “His struggles, his joys, his heroes and his whole journey spills out on the piano when he sits down to play. It’s almost like his own language that he uses to speak to those within earshot of the keys. There will never be another Jon Michael Ogletree. In my book, he’s a living legend.”
