Sean Mayes
Musical Supervisor

Based between New York and Toronto, Sean Mayes enjoys a varied career internationally as a conductor, music supervisor, orchestrator and composer between Broadway, theatre, opera, classical and Pops worlds.

Mayes is the incoming Worldwide Music Supervisor of Disney's The Lion King and Music Supervisor and Co-Orchestrator for Broadway-bound Ali, based on the life of Muhammad Ali, composed by conductor Teddy Abrams and rap icon Q-Tip. His new opera Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White made its world premiere with the Canadian Opera Company in June 2024.

Select credits include: The Voice of Whitney: A Symphonic Celebration (Conductor and Orchestrator, Chicago Philharmonic, Ravinia Festival); Black Broadway (Conductor; American Pops Orchestra, PBS National Broadcast); RENT: In Concert (Music Supervisor, National Symphony Orchestra, Kennedy Center); MJ (Assistant Conductor; Broadway); Hadestown (Associate Conductor; Broadway); An Evening with André De Shields (Music Director and Orchestrator, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra); MANDELA (Conductor; Young Vic Theatre, London); The Color Purple (Music Director, Canadian Regional Premiere); King Lear (Composer, Stratford Festival); Fall On Your Knees (Composer, Canadian National Tour).

Author of three books: Reframing the Musical, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre, Bloomsbury, 2021 and Conversations in Color: Exploring North American Musical Theatre, Bloomsbury, 2023.