Sean Mayes
Conductor & Composer Sean Mayes Joins the Roster
We are pleased to welcome Sean Mayes to our roster for worldwide general management. Born in Toronto and based in New York City, he enjoys an active and varied career internationally with his work as a conductor, music director, orchestrator, arranger, composer, author, and educator—spanning numerous musical styles throughout the world’s largest theaters and concert halls.
In the Broadway community, Mr Mayes is the incoming Worldwide Music Supervisor for Disney’s The Lion King and Music Supervisor & Co-Orchestrator for the Broadway-bound ALI: The Musical, composed by conductor Teddy Abrams & hip-hop legend Q-Tip, to premiere at the Nederlander Theater in Chicago in Spring 2025. Mr Mayes is also Music Director for Broadway luminary André De Shields.
Recent highlights as a conductor and music director include leading the Tony-winning productions MJ: The Musical and Hadestown, the American Pops Orchestra in Black Broadway: A Proud History, A Limitless Future on PBS, The Voice of Whitney: A Symphonic Celebration at the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Philharmonic, the new musical Mandela, inspired by the life of Nelson Mandela and co-produced by the Mandela family at the Young Vic in London, and the Finnish premiere of the Come From Away.
In his home country, Mayes was Music Director & Conductor of the all-Canadian premiere of The Color Purple in 2019, for which he was awarded the 2020 Merritt Award for Outstanding Musical Direction.
As a composer, orchestrator, and arranger, Mayes’ work is frequently performed in venues globally. He was Music Director, Orchestrator & Arranger for An Evening With André De Shields with the Baltimore Symphony in 2021 and last season his Merritt Award-winning compositions were featured in the Canadian national tour of Fall On Your Knees, the stage adaptation of the ground-breaking Canadian novel by Ann-Marie MacDonald. Mayes’ compositions were also heard in King Lear at the the 2023 Stratford Festival.
Equally at ease in the classical world, Sean Mayes composed and orchestrated Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White alongside Canadian multidisciplinary artist HAUI. He also conducted the world premiere at the Canadian Opera Company in the 2023/2024 season. The Globe & Mail hailed its “sweeping, chameleonic score, solidifying Aportia Chryptych as a full-sized, big-room opera.”
Mayes has published three books; Reframing the Musical, about the role of Black music directors and disproportionately represented artists on Broadway; An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre, which retraces Black practitioners through British musical theater history; and Conversations in Color: Exploring North American Musical Theatre, which features interviews with theater industry leaders of color.
Mr Mayes is a member of the Recording Academy and holds degrees in music, education, and music direction from McGill University and the University of Surrey, UK.